Origins

Collected Stories

Compiled by Kimberly J. Kreines

ORIGINS: COLLECTED STORIES

© 2015 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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First Printing: September 2015

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1

Kytheon Iora of Akros

by Ari Levitch

Art by Chase Stone

At night, the darkness of the prison was complete. It draped itself across the stone walls, and seeped into the prisoners’ ragged clothes, an inky stain that did not wash out completely in what pale daylight managed to penetrate the prison’s interior through the narrow shafts high in the walls. When the wind stopped outside, the still darkness had weight under which many prisoners cracked.

But that’s not what gnawed at Kytheon, a thirteen-year-old thief, spending his first night in the darkness. He was stuck on a particular fact that had risen to the top of a heap of information thrown at him earlier about the prison’s routines, rules, and the general order of things. It was something he had heard from Drasus, a friend of his from the Foreigners’ Quarter, and now a fellow prisoner: “Hixus is the warden, but it’s Ristos who runs this place.”

Kytheon must have made a face when presented with this detail. “Try to understand,” Drasus had warned, “Ristos is not like the thugs that the Irregulars threw out of the Quarter. He sees himself as a king. He’s a monster. That’s why he’s in here.”

“We’re in here,” Kytheon had countered.

“You’re in here because you make a poor thief, who was caught for stealing rotten vegetables and a handful of coins. I’m in here for brawling. We’re not killers. So just watch out is all I’m saying.” Drasus had shrugged as though nothing could be done.

Art by Zack Stella

Drasus was three years older than Kytheon, and hot-tempered. He’d been taken to prison more than a season prior, and seeing him was a welcome reunion, though Kytheon hadn’t liked what he had seen in that shrug. He’d tried a different approach.

“You’re one of my Irregulars, Drasus. This Ristos should be the one to watch out for us.”

“You say that now, but he’s bigger than the thugs on the outside. I’m telling you, he’s king.” At that, Drasus had walked away before Kytheon could argue.

There were always people trying to muscle their way into the Foreigners’ Quarter to set up their networks of thievery, smuggling, and intimidation—brutes like Anthedes of the Bloodied Axe, or connivers like Krevarios the Venomous. Kytheon could recognize a bully—he’d spent most of his life dealing with them in some form—and he couldn’t wait to meet Ristos.

At dawn, the new prisoners were bound together by lengths of iron chain and marched through labyrinthine corridors of rough-hewn stone. Kytheon counted six other prisoners, two of whom looked like they’d been through this before. A guard opened a heavy wooden door and the prisoners were led into a cavernous chamber where scores of native prisoners appeared to be laboring.

The air in the chamber was stale, like Kytheon’s cell, but unlike his cell, it was tinged with the scent of mildew. In the center of the chamber, a round shaft, twenty feet across, was cut into the floor. A matching shaft disappeared into the ceiling, and between them, a dozen cables carried huge barrels in both directions.

“Welcome to the Waterfall of Akros,” bellowed a crooked-backed guard, “where the water flows up.” He laughed at his own joke, one that Kytheon did not understand but had a feeling he soon would.

The other guards corralled Kytheon and the new prisoners to an enormous six-spoked crank that was being driven by prisoners who stood six abreast at each spoke, turning it in great circles around a massive oak axle.

“First group! Take a rest!” a guard said. The prisoners pushing one of the crank’s spokes peeled off, massaging their aching muscles or wiping the sweat that burned their eyes.

Kytheon felt a shove at his back, and he took his position at the crank beside the other new prisoners. The wooden beam felt smooth beneath his hands, where countless hands had pushed against the constant resistance of endless barrels of water being hoisted from the river in the valley below to the polis of Akros perched on the cliff above. This was what prison meant. Labor and captivity. He was to be a beast of burden. It was not unlike Akroan hoplite training, Kytheon reflected, smiling to himself. Making the body like marble, they called it—a daily regimen of running and hauling heavy objects. But that was when he was to be a soldier. When he was a kid. That was before he was expelled from the army, before he was an Irregular, before he was a thief, and before he was a prisoner.

Art by Willian Murai

His shoulders and calves burned as he worked the crank. He tried to keep the pain at bay by focusing on a single barrel, following its journey from when it appeared out of the floor until it disappeared into the ceiling. He wasn’t counting them, just watching them, willing himself to follow just one more, and one more after that. There was always another one.

In the gap between two ascending barrels, Kytheon observed a handful of prisoners repairing damaged barrels. They were at work, hammering new iron rings into place with wooden mallets. These prisoners looked healthier, filled out—well fed.

And then finally, “First group! Water!”

Kytheon didn’t remember hearing the other groups get called, but who was he to argue. Legs wobbling without the wooden beam for support, he made his way to a corner of the chamber where bits of masonry were strewn about as makeshift chairs.

Old and broken prisoners filled cracked clay cups with water from a barrel, offering them to the prisoners from the first group along with a heel of stale bread. Meager food was nothing new to Kytheon. The Foreigners’ Quarter of Akros was not known for its opulence or abundance, and there were many days that he, Drasus, Little Olexo, Epikos, and Zenon had to content themselves with such meals.

When he bit into the hard bread, the texture of granulated crumbs was familiar. He found a chunk of masonry and slumped against it. Its cold surface was a welcome relief that he meant to compliment with a mouthful of water. He lifted his cup to his lips, and tipped the water into his mouth, letting the cold liquid slosh around.

“Tribute!” said a rasping voice that interrupted Kytheon’s moment of contentment. The voice belonged to a stout man, barely taller than Kytheon was, who walked among the gathered prisoners of the first group.

Kytheon watched as all of the prisoners the man walked by dropped half their bread, without protest, into a sack he held out to them. Kytheon swallowed the water he had been savoring. Ristos?

The man came closer. He was bare from the waist up, his torso covered in thick, dark hair, save for the scattered raw streaks of puffed scars.

“Tribute!” the man said again, stopping in front of Kytheon.

“Yeah, okay. Whatcha got?”

The man made a noise that was somewhere between grunt and chuckle. “My knee against your throat if you carry on like that, boy. The king demands tribute.”

“King? You Ristos?”

The man didn’t answer. Kytheon looked past him to where the barrels were being repaired. A large man, broad at the shoulders, met the young prisoner’s stare with his own. He had a face wreathed in a mane of coal-grey hair.

“Nah, you couldn’t be Ristos,” said Kytheon, returning his attention to the man in front of him. “I was told I’d be scared of Ristos.”

“You should be,” the thug said through gritted teeth. He tossed his sack of extorted bread aside, but before it hit the ground, Kytheon shoved himself off the chunk of stone and drove his foot into the other man’s shin.

There was a roar of agony as the thug reeled back. In an instant, Kytheon was on his feet, launching a flurry of jabs at the other man’s face. He danced out of range of the counterattack, forcing the thug to overextend and expose himself to another barrage of fists.

Kytheon smiled. A surge of energy welled in him, and he forgot about his sore muscles and grumbling belly. This was his element—the fight.

Art by Eric Deschamps

Ristos’s thug was a seasoned brawler, Kytheon could tell from his experience scrapping with Drasus. This guy was sack of meat who could take a hit, but he was predictable and, like all of the thugs Kytheon had fought in the alleyways of Akros, this one was a talker.

“I’m going to drink wine outta your skull!” he threatened.

Another haymaker, followed by another of Kytheon’s dodges, and another sequence of his punches that connected with ribs and jaw.

Keep babbling, Kytheon thought as he circled around his opponent. For Kytheon, fighting was reflexive—intuitive, instinctive. As a child, he discovered that it was also the source of his magic.

The other prisoners watched them fight, but made no moves to intervene. Kytheon stole a moment to scan the gathered prisoners for Ristos, who he saw had moved in closer and was still watching.

Then all at once, the edge of Kytheon’s vision exploded.

He’d underestimated the thug’s speed. He found himself on the ground, looking up at the other man who was already on top of him, raining down punches. The first few connected. One caught Kytheon on the nose with a sickening crunch and caused another explosion in his vision.

He had to regroup. He had to focus.

The man’s fist rose, but before it fell again, the surface of Kytheon’s skin flared up with countless bands of light that rippled with energy.

The fist came down. When it struck Kytheon below the eye, he felt no pain. Instead he was filled with a burst of energy that he threw into a punch of his own, connecting with the man’s jaw, which cracked under the force. The action was punctuated by the man’s yelp as he tumbled off of Kytheon.

The boy rose to his feet, bands of light still rippling across his body.

The chamber was silent except for the moaning of the thug who lay in a heap cradling his splintered jaw.

Blood ran from Kytheon’s nose, down his chin, and onto his rough-spun garb. He spat a glob of red onto the stone, reached into the abandoned sack of bread, and withdrew a piece. All eyes were on him, but Kytheon just stared at Ristos and proceeded to tear off a chunk of bread with his teeth.

Ristos made a motion, and half a dozen prisoners emerged from the rest, surrounding Kytheon.

The boy wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing it across his cheek. He looked each of Ristos’s thugs in the eye, turned back to their boss, and grinned.

It wasn’t long before guards pushed their way through the throngs of prisoners, but Kytheon didn’t need long. By the time the guards arrived, they found Kytheon, bloody-faced and bloody-fisted, pummeling the last of Ristos’s men.

When the thirteen-year-old kid saw the guards descending on him, he slumped to the floor, spent, exhausted, and utterly satisfied.

Kytheon stood before the warden, bound in iron at the wrists, a pleased smile stretched across his face. Hixus waved his hand, and the two guards who had escorted the young prisoner turned and left Kytheon and the warden alone.

Art by Chris Rallis

Hixus leaned casually against a wooden table that was littered with various piles of documents. The warden was broad at the shoulders and he wore a breastplate with the ease of a seasoned soldier. He stared at Kytheon, seemingly studying his face. After a moment, he ran his fingers through his thick, grey beard and spoke, “You’ve been here for less than two days.” He took a deep breath. “Two days of a ten-year sentence. A brawl in the waterworks, seven prisoners in the infirmary, and a riot…all on your account.”

To Kytheon’s ears, it sounded like a list of accomplishments.

“Ah yes,” Hixus added, “and I am told that you attempted escape as you were being transported here yesterday.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Is there someone else?”

Kytheon didn’t answer.

“For my own curiosity,” the warden went on, “had your escape worked, were you not afraid of what would happen to you once you were apprehended again?”

“I can take it. Besides, you haven’t spent much time in the Foreigners’ Quarter have you? If I made there, the Irregulars would protect me. You’d never get me again.”

It was the warden’s turn to smile. “Ah, the Irregulars. Protectors of the Quarter. Kytheon’s Irregulars.”

Art by Mark Winters

“Yep.”

“Quite a loyal following. And many of them end up spending time here. Your friend, Drasus, is a current representative of the Irregulars in here, isn’t he? Now you as well. You know, there are quite a few prisoners in here who have words and more for you and your Irregulars, yet it seems you insist on making more enemies.”

“Ristos?” Kytheon couldn’t help but laugh. “My mother called people like him weak because their strength comes from how others see them. 'Strength comes from action,' she said. Ristos is weak. I saw it right away. Now everyone else here knows it too.”

The Warden chuckled. “I see. In that case, it shouldn’t surprise you that he is with his men in the infirmary.”

“I never touched him.”

“It’s like you said, though. His strength evaporated the moment a kid took down his men in front of the other prisoners and he fled for safety. When you were locked away last night, a riot erupted—started by Drasus, mind you. They’d had enough of Ristos and let him know it. Not everyone has your gift to shrug off attacks.”

“He had it coming.”

“Perhaps. He is a brute, that much is true. But some things have value beyond their surface appearance. Bad as he was, he helped maintain order.” The warden threw his hands up. “Now what do I do?”

“I can’t tell you how to do your job, Warden.”

“No you can’t. But maybe you can help me. Are you my next Ristos?”

“I’m better than Ristos.”

“Are you? Prove it.”

“Prove it? He’s in the infirmary, and I barely have a scratch.”

“And what now? Will you take his place? Replacing him doesn’t make you better. It makes you the same.”

“We’ll never know. I don’t plan on staying.”

With a movement so quick that it startled Kytheon, Hixus took the heavy ring of keys that hung from his belt, and dropped them on the table. Iron clattered on wood, and before the sound faded, Hixus had a dagger in his hand. Kytheon took a step back, raised his fists defensively, and light erupted over his body in frenetic ripples.

“Do not feel threatened,” said Hixus. "By all accounts, trying to harm you physically would be fruitless." He flipped the dagger deftly in his hand so that he gripped the blade, and he offered it to Kytheon. “Take it.”

Kytheon hesitated only for a moment. His fingers closed around the hilt.

“I offer you your freedom,” the warden said. “All you have to do is take the keys, and escape is yours.”

“You’d just let me out of here?”

“No. You’ll have to kill me for the keys. And if the rumors of your fighting skill are true, I don’t stand much of a chance.”

Pride swelled in Kytheon. He always liked to fight. He was good at it.

Kytheon pointed the dagger at the warden for a long moment. Neither averted his gaze from the other.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Kytheon finally said. He dropped his arm to his side, letting the dagger clatter to the floor.

“Because you’re not a murderer. You’re not a Ristos.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“On the contrary, I am encouraged by this outcome. It is what I was hoping for. It is what I believed to be true. You are here, a thief, condemned for stealing. But what you stole was food, to help feed your friends and their families. You do what you think is right.”

Kytheon stared down at the chain that hung between his ankles. “What do you want from me?”

“From most of my prisoners, I want serenity and obedience. From you? I want you to accept my offer. I want to train you, Kytheon.”

Though Kytheon hadn’t agreed to the training, his protest has been largely ignored. He was roused before the sun the next morning and dragged out to the prison’s modest gymnasium. It was a round patch of packed earth surrounded by high walls. Hixus was standing in the center of the arena-like circle. He tossed his ring of keys to the dirt.

“I’m still not going to kill you,” Kytheon said.

“I hope not,” said the warden. “Just come get them.” The corner of his mouth curled into a smirk. “Succeed, and they’re yours.”

Kytheon charged.

Hours later, Kytheon lamented, he had gained no ground. Each of his charges were abbreviated by chains of brilliant white energy that erupted from the ground to shackle his limbs, or by lashes of luminescent magic that pushed his limbs just enough to interrupt his gait and send him tumbling to the dirt. There could be no progress. The keys were infinitely far from his grasp, and with each fruitless exertion, they edged even farther away.

Art by Chris Rallis

Then without a word, Hixus scooped up the keys and left the gymnasium. Kytheon dropped to his knees in the dirt, frustrated and full of spite.

The days that followed unfolded much like the first: Hixus offered the keys, Kytheon attempted to retrieve them, but failed, Hixus left with the keys, and Kytheon seethed at the cruel game.

One gray morning after a punishing storm, Kytheon struggled to rise from the muddy mire that had become the gymnasium ground for what felt like the hundredth time. When his strength failed, he collapsed back into the muck.

Red-eyed, he yelled at the warden, “I can’t do it!”

“Why is that? Are you not brave enough?”

Kytheon turned away.

Hixus continued, “Are you not strong enough? Or fast enough?”

The warden stood over Kytheon, looking down at the boy who returned his gaze with eyes that were filling with tears and contempt.

“It’s not me! It’s you! You won’t let me even get close,” said Kytheon.

At that, Hixus knelt in the mud beside him. “Now you understand.”

It was common to call hieromancy “law magic,” but Hixus said that this was an oversimplification. “Laws are created by people, and laws can change, but laws are created in reaction to specific behaviors. A person steals, and laws are put in place to prevent more theft. This is the starting point for hieromancy as a practice.”

“Every action has a response that can counter it,” Hixus went on. “A master of hieromancy can adapt to any scenario, and turn it to his advantage. Victory in any contest will go to the one who has control of the situation.”

Half a dozen escape attempts later, Kytheon took to his training. It complimented his natural talent for reading others in combat, intuiting their position and body language to understand what they would do next. Hieromancy gave Kytheon a tool to disrupt opponents and press his advantage.

Every morning, Kytheon the student was awakened before dawn to join Hixus in the gymnasium, and every afternoon, the irons that bound his wrists were replaced and Kytheon the prisoner rejoined the others at the Waterfall of Akros. He benefited from both activities. Hieromancy strengthened his mind, and turning the great crank strengthened his body.

Art by Chris Rallis

He fell into a rhythm and for four years he relied on the structure to carry him through his days. Until one morning his rhythm was interrupted.

Kytheon’s eyes flew open at the piercing sound of a shrill shriek. He bolted up, alert. It was later than usual, he could tell. Where were the guards?

More shrieks sounded, gathering together as a rising, terrible chorus.

Harpies. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did know. Though he had never encountered one, Kytheon knew them from stories—winged horrors that feasted on the dead and carried off children.

He sprang to his feet and strained to look out his window. The harpies were approaching from up river. Their relentless shrieks were answered by the deep clanging of bells, calling soldiers to their posts on the walls of the Kolophon, the mighty Akroan fortress. The panicked scrambling above meant that no stratian or oromai rider arrived with warning.

Kytheon watched through his narrow slit of a window as the horde descended on the fortress like flies on a ripe corpse. The harpies were endless, and he couldn’t shift his gaze from the black cloud of feathers and talons and hunger.

Through the terrible noise, Kytheon heard a pounding at his cell door. He saw Hixus’s face in the door’s barred window.

“The polis is under attack,” said Hixus.

“Harpies.”

“In unprecedented numbers.”

The bolt in the door clicked, and the door swung open. The warden filled the doorframe. He had donned his full armor—his bronze-plated breastplate, matching greaves, and metal-crested helm. He gripped his unsheathed sword in one hand and held a rough sack slung over his shoulder in the other.

“Do you want to earn your freedom?” said Hixus, tossing the sack at Kytheon’s feet.

Kytheon raised an eyebrow. He knelt and reached into the sack, and when he withdrew his hand, it was wrapped around the hilt of a sheathed Akroan sword. The other contents completed the armaments of a hoplite: breastplate, greaves, and round shield. Kytheon grinned.

A short while later, Kytheon found himself, armed and armored, in the prison’s cavernous waterworks, among a little under half of the prisoners. Warden Hixus stood atop a chunk of masonry and addressed the gathered criminals.

“As you know, a host of harpies attacks the polis ahead of any scouts. We do not know why, and that does not matter. I have been given orders to open my cells and offer freedom to those who fight to defend the polis. You here are the willing ones. Despite what has come before, Akros is your polis. What you do today will shape its future, and your place in it. If you die in battle, then it will be among heroes. Earn this!”

Kytheon and Hixus sprinted from the Archway of Champions to the bright sands of the arena at the head of the militia of prisoners. At their approach, harpies scattered into the air from the corpses of the Akroan guards upon which they feasted before wheeling around to attack what they saw as fresh meat.

So many, thought Kytheon.

The winged creatures wheeled above the polis, a swirling, ravenous mass…then fell upon the prisoners.

Prisoners scattered, fending off what they could. A harpy dived into Kytheon, who had only enough time to lift his shield to deflect its weight. The harpy grabbed hold of the rim of the shield with its talons, but Kytheon leaned into it, managing to pin the monster beneath the shield. Its dark eyes made it seem almost human until it parted its leathery lips to reveal pointed teeth meant for piercing human flesh. The harpy shrieked, trying to wriggle free, but fell silent when Kytheon thrust his sword into its neck.

Another harpy crashed into Kytheon’s back before he could withdraw his blade. Talons sunk deep into the muscle of his left arm. Kytheon gritted his teeth and dropped his weight to his right to roll away from the new attacker, bringing his shield around to catch the harpy in its ribs, forcing it to retreat.

He braced for a counterattack.

The harpy circled Kytheon and crouched low, using its arms as support. Kytheon circled with it. The harpy stood upright, lifted its black-feathered wings, and screeched.

Kytheon lunged at it.

With a downward stroke of its wings, the harpy leapt into the air to avoid the attack while another harpy barreled into Kytheon. Harpy and Akroan tumbled to the sand of the arena.

More harpies descended on Kytheon, vultures converging to pick his bones clean.

Filed teeth slid into the flesh of his upper arm.

Kytheon yelled out in pain, but the yell turned into a roar. He wrapped both arms around the harpy gnawing at his flesh, and pinned it to him. Using it as a shield against the others, he rolled free. He cast the harpy aside and scrambled to his feet. He had bought himself a moment.

Before the harpy could find its feet, Kytheon summoned forth from the ground a set of brilliant white chains to bind the monster.

Art by Igor Kieryluk

More enemies swarmed from all directions. Everything around him was a blur of black feathers, and all sound was drowned out by the shrill screeches of the harpies.

A sudden burst of white energy erupted in the sky above the arena, sending out waves in concentric rings. It passed through the mass of harpies. They began to fly erratically, colliding with one another.

Hixus. Kytheon found his mentor on the steps at the base of Iroas’s column in the center of the arena. His eyes glowed an intense white as he channeled energy into the sky.

Where the disoriented harpies crashed to the sand, Kytheon called forth glowing, white chains to bind them.

“That won’t hold them forever,” boomed Hixus, his voice infused with magic that allowed his words to be heard above the harpies. “Form up around the column in the center. Put your backs to it, shield to shield!”

Kytheon scooped up his sword and bolted for Hixus, where the surviving prisoners were already ranking up in a ring around the column. They locked their shields, with swords and spears jutting out. They became a single entity, a phalanx in the Temple of Triumph, standing against a host of enemies.

Many harpies fell, and more turned away.

Kytheon raised his sword in salute. “Hoplites of the Broken Chains!” he declared, and was answered with a collective, rising roar.

The respite faded as quickly as it had begun. “Cyclops!” came a cry from the wall of the Kolophon.

“And another!” called a second voice.

“Here too!”

Kytheon turned to Hixus, “Warden, the walls!”

Above the arena, the harpies were regrouping. Scores flew off for the walls in search of easier prey.

“Undefendable if the harpies get to the guards,” said the warden, “and perhaps futile if the cyclopes number more than a few.”

“Allow me to rally the Irregulars. If you can keep the harpies off us, we can keep the cyclopes off the walls.”

Kytheon felt the weight of Hixus’s gaze. He met it, expecting a lesson, even in the middle of all this, but his mentor simply nodded.

A moment later, Kytheon was making his way along the top of the wall that surrounded the polis. Harpies passed him by as they converged on the Temple of Triumph. When he turned to follow their course, he saw a bright, white helix reaching skyward. Glowing pulses surged up the winding, parallel strands, and Kytheon understood.

The harpies were drawn toward the source, and they converged once again on the Temple of Triumph. He didn’t know how long the warden and the others would be able to hold out, but if they didn’t buy him enough time to deal with the cyclopes, the polis would be lost.

He ran flat out, passing sporadic clumps of soldiers battling cyclopes. Each blow against the walls reverberated throughout the polis, echoing of marble and stone.

Finally, he arrived at the Foreigners’ Quarter, where the old wall turned inward, marking the polis’s original boundaries. The wall had been extended to include the Foreigners’ Quarter, but it was neither as tall, nor as formidable here. From where he stood, he could see three of the lumbering cyclopes barreling toward the wall. Left alone, they would bring it down.

From the old wall, Kytheon dropped down onto Stone Pike, a raised walkway built into the wall that allowed quick access around the Quarter. As he ran, he was greeted by the familiar pungent odors of the Quarter. Below him were familiar streets he knew and loved, streets that he hadn’t seen since he was pulled from them by Akroan guards. He had been gone for four years. He had been gone when the attack came. But now he was here. He was home.

Kytheon followed Stone Pike to the Quarter’s fortified gatehouse, the point at which non-Akroans first entered the polis. As he approached, he saw a man directing people who carried enormous beams meant to reinforce the gate. Kytheon laughed out loud. He knew the man, an Irregular named Zenon, a Setessan who always insisted on placing wagers on any form of contest. His hair had grown shaggy, but he wore the same green cloak he’d brought from the woodland polis years ago when he first came to Akros. Kytheon called down to his friend.

“I didn’t believe it when they told me the prisoners were released,” said Zenon.

“How much did you bet I’d still be alive?”

“Who says I bet you’d be alive? Besides, it isn’t time to collect yet.” His mouth parted in a grin that would have come across a cruel had Kytheon not known him. “Now then, in case it got by you, a handful of cyclopes want into the polis. Give us a hand?”

Kytheon climbed down to the street to help bear one of the beams. The wall behind them boomed then groaned as a cyclops threw its weight into it.

“It’s going to come down!” shouted Zenon.

Kytheon turned to his friend. “Then we must open the gate.”

“What?” Zenon gave him a look.

“Trust me,” Kytheon said, running toward the gate. He understood Zenon’s hesitation; only a few years ago his face would have held the same baffled expression, or more likely he would have charged at the straining wall without so much as a thought. But, this was not a few years ago. Adapt, turn the situation to my advantage, ensure victory.

Kytheon confidently threw his weight into one of the beams that was holding the gate shut.

The great wooden gates moaned as their hinges gave to the power of the cranks that drove them. The sound did not go unnoticed. As Kytheon hoped, the cyclopes diverted their attention to the opening in the wall, and they rushed toward it. Kytheon and a handful of the Irregulars marched through the gateway and on to the causeway.

“Seal it!” called Drasus to the soldiers at the gatehouse.

The first cyclops came charging down the causeway as the gates began to creak closed. It was a thing of raw anger and unrelenting hunger, its single eye fixed on the gate behind the Irregulars. It had a disproportionately large mouth that frothed as it ran, sending globules of foamy saliva in all directions. This was a mouth that could swallow a person whole.

Art by Raymond Swanland

The Irregulars formed up to take the charge, spears braced, with Kytheon at the apex of the formation. As the cyclops lifted one of its enormous arms to backhand the nuisance aside, Kytheon conjured lengths of chain forged from magic from the ground and bound its wrists.

“Ready now, Irregulars!” said Kytheon.

The cyclops strained against the fetter, but more chains followed. Enraged, the cyclops lurched forward in an attempt to break free. Kytheon ceased the spell, and the monster’s momentum sent it stumbling at the defenders. The Irregulars met its momentum head on, letting its weight drive it onto half a dozen spears. The cyclops let out a bellow that faded into a gurgle as blood bubbled up in its throat, before it collapsed on the causeway between Kytheon and the Irregulars.

Before Kytheon could rejoin his comrades, the second cyclops was upon him. Zenon the Setessan tossed his spear to Kytheon, who caught it in time to sidestep out of the cyclops’s reach. Kytheon whirled, planted his feet, and drove the spear into the side of the brute’s leg. The spear’s tip tore through muscle before emerging out the other side.

The cyclops tried to swat at Kytheon. It took a step to pivot. As it brought its other leg around, it caught the shaft of the spear, and it went crashing to its knees.

Kytheon dragged his sword across its throat.

Art by Adam Paquette

Kytheon watched the sun break over the tops of the mountains that rose above Akros. He stopped climbing for a moment to let the sunlight wash over his face.

Drasus hurried to catch up. “What are you doing?”

Kytheon glanced down to Akros below. “The prison is the last place in Akros to see the sun, did you know that?”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“Well, today we are the first,” said Kytheon, closing his eyes and filling his lungs with crisp air.

“Well-earned, I’d say. Look.” Drasus pointed to the causeway in front of the polis’s main gate where he counted more than twenty Akroans tugging at ropes tied to the lifeless corpse of a cyclops that they were hauling away. Two other cyclopes lay lifeless on the causeway.

“Well-earned,” Kytheon agreed.

The two Irregulars turned to resume climbing the mountain. They scanned the surrounding area for another wave of monsters, for any sign that the attack wasn’t over.

Farther up their ascent, Kytheon and Drasus parted ways. Drasus was to scout to the north, while Kytheon took the south.

For more than an hour, Kytheon picked his away along a crumbling stone footpath that took him higher up the mountainside. He was not an experienced climber, but he relied on his reflexes to keep his footing. The path took him to the edge of a deep gorge that dropped to a river that wound out of the mountains toward Akros. Spanning the gorge was a bridge of rock that somehow seemed both natural and shaped all at once. Kytheon’s gaze followed the length of the bridge. The other side was bathed in daylight despite the shadows that still shrouded the surrounding rocks.

Kytheon crossed the bridge.

To his surprise, a man greeted him on the other side. The man had a powerful frame that was draped in flowing, gold fabric. Thick, black hair fell past his shoulders, and above his head floated a laurel of golden leaves. The spear he held was tipped in brilliant golden filigree that surrounded a luminous orb. Behind the man rose an immense marble statue so brilliantly illuminated that Kytheon was unable to make out its features.

“Kytheon Iora of Akros,” the man called out in a voice that seemed to come from every direction. “Your task is not yet finished.”

“True enough, if you stand in my path.” Already, bands of white energy rippled across the surface of Kytheon’s skin. “Who are you?”

The man lowered the tip of his spear to the ground and the shift in light brought out the detail of the statue, which Kytheon recognized as a marble replica of the man.

Art by Raymond Swanland

All Kytheon could articulate was, “Heliod.”

“God of the Sun,” boomed Heliod.

At this, Kytheon bowed his head.

“You were given the task of defending your polis. The monsters that attacked it did not do so out of malice. They were fleeing before something far worse. My brother, Erebos, God of the Underworld, has recruited a cruel titan who now stalks the lands beyond these mountains. On his errand, he will pass through Akros.”

“What errand? What will he do?”

“He is tasked with reclaiming those who have escaped from the Underworld. All those who stand in his path mean nothing to Erebos, who sees only the inevitability that all mortals will end up in the Underworld.”

The Sun God reached out and put his hand upon Kytheon’s shoulder. “You proved your worth as a warrior in the attack on your polis, but it is time to prove yourself worthy to be my champion.” He reached up to the sunlit sky, and the light coalesced around his fist. It elongated and took the shape of a spear that resembled the god’s own weapon.

“With this spear, destroy the titan. This is what I task you with. This is your ordeal.”

Kytheon gaped, both at the spear and at the task the god had set before him.

Kytheon was sprinting. Beneath his feet, the cracked, barren earth flew past. His chest heaved and his lungs burned, but his legs continued pumping. If Kytheon had his way, his legs would carry him to the low hill ahead, where a windblown, crumbling formation of rocks stood. And there he would not be alone.

Heavy footfalls, one for every half-dozen of his, shook the ground behind him, kicking up clouds of dust. Killing a titan was no easy task, but Kytheon had clearly made an impression on Erebos’s servant. Kytheon glanced at the sticky, black blood that clung to the tip of his sun-touched spear, and risked a look over his shoulder. His vision was filled by the titan’s frame.

Art by Peter Mohrbacher

The titan was clad in scale armor fashioned from scores of golden masks from those who escaped the Underworld. At that moment the vacant eyes of each mask seemed to be staring right at Kytheon.

A shadow streaked overhead. Kytheon saw the head of the titan’s massive flail falling like a meteor toward him. He rolled away as it slammed into the ground beside him.

When Kytheon reached the rocks, he kept running. As he passed through two crumbling pillars, the titan’s flail pulverized one to his left. It exploded in a hail of stone shards.

Kytheon tumbled to the ground. The back of his head felt warm, and when he touched it, his hand came away smeared with blood. Careless, Kytheon thought. Should have seen that coming. The clank of chain told Kytheon that the titan was gathering its flail for another swing. He had to keep moving.

The titan let out a low, rumbling roar, and the stench of mold and rot billowed from its mouth. Winded, Kytheon gulped the foul air, and though it seemed to cling to the inside of his mouth, it was enough for him to scramble away from the titan’s attempt to stomp the would-be champion of Heliod to pulp.

The titan lashed out with a backhand. Kytheon anticipated it. He caught the blow, unscathed and unmoved, his protective magic absorbing the impact. He grabbed hold of one of the titan’s colossal fingers, planted his feet, and refused to let go. He just needed a moment.

“Now!” Kytheon yelled.

A heartbeat later, Drasus came charging from around another rock pillar. “Irregulars,” he called, “bring it down!”

Three Irregulars emerged from hiding to join Drasus. They had ropes that ended in crude grappling hooks. Just another bully in the Quarter, thought Kytheon, smiling amidst the chaos.

Olexo, the youngest among them, cast his rope over the titan’s thick forearm, and the hook sank into pallid flesh. The others followed his lead, and when the titan broke free of Kytheon’s hold, the Irregulars yanked on their ropes. The titan wobbled off balance. Enraged, it whirled its flail around its head, clearly eager to be rid of such annoyances.

Art by Karl Kopinski

Every action has a response. The idea filled Kytheon’s mind. Every action has a tipping point that, if recognized, can be harnessed as magic to gain control of a fight. He saw his opening.

As the black iron flail orbited the titan’s head, Kytheon drew on hieromantic magic to conjure an ethereal wedge of energy that struck the titan on the inside of its elbow, so that its arm folded at the joint. The momentum in the head of the flail sent it arcing over the titan’s shoulder, striking it in the back. It crumpled to its knees, rearing its head up to bellow in agony and anger.

That was all Kytheon needed. He leapt part way up one of the pillars, only to turn and launch himself at the titan, spear in hand. Sunlight caught the tip of the spear, blinding the titan during his approach, until he sunk the spear deep into its chest, parting the masks of the Returned. Dark blood welled up around the spear, and the titan took one more shuddering breath before collapsing to the dust.

Kytheon rolled off the fallen titan. The Ordeal is done, he thought. Heliod’s task is fulfilled. Akros is safe.

He reclaimed his spear, and turned to the Irregulars. Here they were, a bunch of kids from the Foreigners’ Quarter. Together, they had broken the stranglehold of crime lords in the Quarter, defended Akros from hordes of ravening monsters, and destroyed a titan in service of a god on behalf of another god. They were his comrades, his family, and his terms for accepting the Sun God’s Ordeal. Alone, he was strong and skilled. But together with his Irregulars, what were the squabbles of the gods?

In his peripheral vision, Kytheon saw the horizon move. When he looked, he saw two wisps of smoke rising into the sky, their source a pair of dark eyes. Erebos, God of the Dead, loomed over the landscape, a witness to the defeat of his servant. Inky, black vapor rose from the god’s dark eyes that were set in his emotionless face.

Kytheon drew his spear back. He was the champion of Heliod, the Sun God. If Erebos was the cause of all of this trouble, then he would have to answer for it. Kytheon let the spear fly. He felt its power as he let it loose, and the spear sailed through the air toward the God of the Dead.

Emotionless, Erebos gave a simple flick of an emaciated wrist. From the horizon, his whip unfurled, appearing to take on a life of its own. When it met the champion’s spear in flight, Erebos flicked his wrist a second time. The whip cracked, deflecting the spear back toward Kytheon at blinding speed.

Kytheon stood defiantly against the counterattack and the Irregulars fell in around him. Striations of light flickered to life on his skin, and he summoned all the magic and strength that he could as he watched the tip of the weapon close in.

When the spear slammed against him, it exploded in a flash of intense light that washed over Kytheon, turning everything white.

The light lingered for a while, and when it died down, it took a moment for Kytheon’s eyes to adjust. His ears rang, and he found it difficult to focus.

Color slowly seeped back into his surroundings. He looked down, inspecting where the spear made contact. No damage, but he noticed flecks of red. He moved a hand to wipe them, and saw that the back of it was splattered red too—both hands were. But if it wasn’t his blood….

Art by Winona Nelson

No.

He whirled around.

His eyes passed over four lifeless bodies.

No.

The ground heaved, and Kytheon struggled to keep his footing. He staggered among his fallen Irregulars, mouth agape. His thoughts turned to the spear, thrown by his own hand.

With clenched fists, Kytheon began to shake. His magic exploded to life once more, and bands of light moved faster and faster over his body. His skin threw off arcs of light that rippled from him with increasing intensity. The sky above him spun.

As white light continued to pour off of him, the landscape around him began to shift, bend, and stretch.

From it, rolling plains emerged.

And the twilit sky gave way to a vibrant blue.

Nothing made sense anymore; it felt like the whole world was coming to an end.

Eyes red and face twisted in anguish, Kytheon tilted his gaze skyward, where a brilliant sun shone. He closed his eyes and knelt there unable to will himself from that spot.

Time passed. Kytheon had no way to gauge how much. A continuous, dull ache numbed his insides.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. I’m being watched, he thought. Erebos? Heliod? Fine. Let them.

Then he felt a blast of warm air accompanied by a low, rumbling growl. His eyes flew open and an enormous, shadowy mass, silhouetted against the sun, filled his vision.

A face.

His pupils adjusted to the light.

A lion’s face.

Kytheon stumbled backward at the revelation, throwing his arms up defensively. The lion made no movement, and after a moment, Kytheon lowered his arms. He saw that the lion was barded like a warhorse, and atop a saddle sat a rider encased in armor like none Kytheon had ever seen. It covered the rider from head to toe, and where it caught the sun it gave off a brilliant gleam.

Art by Anastasia Ovchinnikova

Though his throat was dry, Kytheon managed to push words out of his mouth. “Where am I? Who are you?”

“I am Moukir, captain of the Knights of the Pilgrim’s Road. You are lost in the Bant nation of Valeron. You are unwell.” As the knight spoke, Kytheon noticed she was not alone. A handful of other knights had formed up behind their captain. “What is your name, wanderer?”

“Kytheon,” Kytheon choked out.

“Gideon?” Moukir attempted to confirm.

Before he could correct the knight, Kytheon was overcome by a wave of serenity that suddenly welled up inside of him. His eyes were drawn skyward.

Beyond the knights he saw a woman descending from the air, held aloft on two wings of white feathers. There was a sense of nobility about her that was calming and inspiring all at once. She came to hover before him, an angel clad in plate armor like the knights.

In that moment, Kytheon knew that he had left Theros, his home, behind. His Irregulars were gone—a pain he brought with him. His ordeal had only begun.

Art by William Murai

2

Absent Minds

by Kelly Digges

VRYN

Jace paused at the foot of the last flight of stairs. His family lived most of the way up the mage-ring the locals called Silmot’s Crossing, among the collection of apartments where the poorest mana miners on the ring made their home. He and his family had to pay to take the rickety lifts or trudge up twenty-three flights of stairs every time they returned home. Money was scarce, so Jace took the stairs.

Twenty-two flights of stairs behind him. One to go.

Art by Chase Stone

Now that he was this close, he hesitated. He was going to be in trouble, probably as soon as he opened the door, even though he still didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.

Lack-witted idiot.

A big lug shoved past him from behind.

Jace couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment.

I swear, that Beleren kid…

Jace finally reached the top of the stairs. He took a deep breath and stepped into the apartment.

Home.

Sure enough, there was his father, sitting at the kitchen table, frowning. Gav Beleren, grubby and balding, regarded Jace with little more than weariness.

I wish he was normal.

His father’s thoughts traced a familiar path.

“I got a sending from school.”

Jace wasn’t surprised the news had beaten him home. Illusions didn’t have to climb stairs, and he hadn’t exactly hurried. His father gestured for him to sit.

“Mind telling me what happened?”

Jace sat. He shrugged and stared at the table.

“You don’t want to be expelled, do you? Education is your ticket out of here, to a better life.”

A better life than mine. It always came back to that.

“I know,” said Jace.

You don’t act like it.

“I just need to know whether you did this. I want to hear it from you.”

Jace kept staring at the table.

He’d taken a mana dynamics test full of questions he didn’t know how to begin to answer. He thought he’d studied, thought he’d been prepared, but as he stared at the test, he drew a complete blank. Then the answers just…came to him. He knew the formulas. He showed his work. He answered perfectly, and he knew it.

Thing was, he’d been right the first time—he had been prepared for the test—but they were trick questions. He wasn’t supposed to know the answers. He was supposed to get as close as he could, to show what he knew, but he knew too much.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know? What the hell does that mean? Did you cheat or not?”

“No,” said Jace. “I just…knew the answers.”

“They’re saying you solved a six-node mana-pressure equation in your head. If that’s true, you should be supervising a regulator team, not taking lessons.”

Jace shrugged again. “Maybe I should be.”

Too far. His father pounded the table with a fist.

“Go to your room. We’ll talk about this when your mother gets home.”

Jace stood and turned to the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Why is it never easy with you?

“Out,” said Jace. And he ran, before his father could stop him.

He ran up the stairs this time, around the curve of the ring, all the way to its apex, above even the monitoring station, pressing through the crowd. Their thoughts, loud and sullen, mingled with his own. He climbed a ladder to an access hatch—one that civilians on the ring weren’t even supposed to know about—and stepped out onto the roof of the massive structure he called home.

Art by Jaime Jones

He stood hundreds of feet above the valley floor on the angled, rusty plates that made up the ring’s outer shell. The wind whipped at his cloak, and he pulled his scarf up around his head. Here, far from the inhabited portions of the ring, he could think without interruption. Other peoples’ thoughts were distant echoes; he couldn’t hear anything but the whistling of the wind.

Towering above him was the hoop of the guide ring, easily forty feet across but miniscule in comparison to the ring itself. He walked carefully down the curved plating and sat near the edge on the windward side. Vertigo overtook him and he savored it, one feeling at least that he could be sure was his own. It happened, occasionally, that people fell, and usually somebody caught them. Usually.

The line of mage-rings stretched away into the distance, following a gentle curve. Three rings down, they joined with another and merged into one channel: Silmot’s Crossing. The nearby rings had picked up the name as well. Past the Crossing, that gentle curve continued, cutting across the silvery ribbon of the Sparrow River, following a different set of currents entirely.

Behind him, somewhere, were the enormous mana collection stations that channeled energy into the ring network. And out there, ahead of him, past the horizon, were the Core States, sitting in the middle of the ring network, gathering all the energy of an entire continent for use by the mage elite—unless the Separatists had hijacked the stream again. The ringers theoretically owed their allegiance to the Ampryn League, but they never knew who was working the receivers at any given time, and they didn’t really care. As long as the mana kept moving, nobody would bother them.

The guide ring above him began to crackle with flickers of energy—intermittently at first, then more vigorously. Jace was in luck. He smiled and reached into his pack, where he’d stashed some meat pies in anticipation of being sent to bed without eating. Dinner and a show.

Over the roar of the wind came the faint sound of bells ringing far below. It was about to begin. He took a bite of a lukewarm meat pie. Not bad.

As he chewed, the guide ring—smaller and more sensitive than the primary—reacted to an incoming mana pulse. All the ringers on second shift scrambled to action far beneath him. In the monitoring station, supervisors gauged the strength of the incoming pulse and assigned ring mages to points all around the ring to stabilize the mana stream.

Art by Jung Park

No doubt the coordinators in the monitoring station were furiously calculating mana pressure equations. Their ring had twelve mana control nodes, each crewed by half a dozen ring mages, and each mana pulse had its own pressure and spin and internal dynamics. Even with guidance tables, the math would be exponentially more difficult than what was on his test, but the supervisors knew how to do it.

Jace took another bite of his pie. What if someone asked him to solve it? Would he find that he somehow knew this too? He chewed, contemplating. Perhaps. Probably. It seemed so.

In a flash, the air below him filled with shimmering, white-blue energy. The mana stream arced through the center of the ring, fluctuating as the ring mages channeled magic into the mana nodes to achieve a consistent pressure.

It was a vison. A masterpiece.

The ring groaned and creaked as the stream locked into place, the raw power of the mana stream anchored to the physical structure of the ring.

There’s the freak.

The biting thought was the only warning Jace got.

He scrambled to his feet and spun, but he was too late. Three of his schoolmates stood between him and the access hatch.

Art by Kieran Yanner

“Hey, Beleren,” said the largest of the three, his booming voice overpowering the wind. His name was Tuck. At fourteen, he was a year older than Jace, a head taller, and built like a loading dock.

The other two were Caden, a crater-faced kid who made Tuck look brilliant, and Jillet, an angry young woman who had more sway over Caden and Tuck than either of the two toughs realized. Once, when they were in primary school, she’d shoved Jace down a flight of stairs.

“I was just leaving,” Jace said, moving to slip between Tuck and Jill.

Jill shoved him back into place.

“Don’t be rude,” said Tuck. “We just want to enjoy the view with you.”

“I need to get home,” said Jace. He moved to step around the trio entirely, but Tuck shot out a meaty arm and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Let’s chat,” said Tuck. “The instructor thinks you’re a cheater, but you aren’t, are you?”

Jace tried to shrug out of Tuck’s grip, but he didn’t dare lay a hand on the larger boy.

“You’re worse than a cheater,” said Tuck. “You’re a freak.”

The bones in Jace’s shoulder ground together under Tuck’s hand.

“A stuck-up, know-it-all freak.”

Tuck continued to squeeze. Jace stared at the ground, unable to move any farther.

“Fine,” said Jace. “Whatever.”

“Say it,” said Tuck. He was grinning.

“I’m a freak,” whispered Jace.

Tuck pulled him closer.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t quite hear you. Caden, could you hear him?”

“Not a peep,” said Caden.

“I’m a freak,” said Jace, louder this time.

“See, boys?” said Jill. “I told you the freak knew he was a freak.”

“Well,” said Tuck, “what do we do with a freak?”

He punched Jace in the stomach, hard. Jace sank to all fours…and peered inside the jagged, tangled corridors of Tuck’s mind.

“It must have been very frightening,” said Jace, speaking into the rusted plating.

“What did you say?” Tuck hauled Jace to his feet.

“I said that it must have been very frightening.”

Tuck stopped grinning. “What?”

“Waiting for him to come home,” said Jace.

“Who?” asked Jill.

“Knowing he was drunk,” said Jace. “Knowing he was going to hit you again.”

“Shut up,” snarled Tuck. He grabbed Jace by the throat.

“You’d pretend to be asleep,” wheezed Jace. “You had your little knife, tucked into bed with you. And every time…”

“Shut up!” yelled Tuck. He squeezed.

“Every time…y-you told yourself…you were going to fight back.” Jace’s vision began to dim. Through Tuck’s eyes, he looked blurred.

“Tuck?” said Caden.

“But you never did,” whispered Jace.

Shut up! Tuck shoved Jace, sending him skidding across the slick, cold plating of the mage-ring’s roof—toward the edge.

Jace scrabbled at the plating, trying to stop his momentum, but there was nothing to hang on to. Jace went over, caught one hand on the edge of the roof, and hung there. His feet dangled in empty air and his fingers went instantly numb.

Wind whistled.

Below him, the mana stream hummed. If he fell in, he didn’t know what would happen. The mana potential of hundreds of acres of territory, captured and channeled into a single beam…he’d probably be vaporized.

His fingers trembled.

He got his other hand up, but the ledge was an overhang. He had no leverage. He was going to need help.

Tuck’s face loomed above him, a mask of rage and pain.

“Nobody knows about that,” he hissed. “Nobody. Not since the bastard died.”

“Tuck, he’s gonna fall,” said Caden.

Cramps shot up and down Jace’s arm. His grip was giving out.

“You want him digging around in your head? Telling Jilly here the things you say about her when she’s not around?”

“Excuse me?” said Jill.

“Shut up, Tuck!” said Caden.

“Now you know how I feel.” Tuck looked down at Jace. His eyes were wild. “Never again, Beleren.”

He raised a boot.

Help me.

Jace’s perspective lurched. He was looking down at himself, down at Tuck, out of Caden’s eyes.

Caden’s hand moved. Jace moved it. He didn’t know how or why or what Caden was seeing right now. He didn’t really care.

Art by Kieran Yanner

With Caden under his control, Jace grabbed Tuck’s shoulder and yanked him back from the edge, then stiffly offered himself a hand.

How small he looked, hanging desperately above the crackling stream of mana. How vulnerable he looked. He hated it.

Back in his own head, Jace grabbed Caden’s hand and hauled himself up.

He stood there, shaking, the plating solid under his feet. He only half-believed he was still alive. He looked to his three schoolmates.

Caden swayed on his feet, his eyes crackling with blue energy. Tuck was red-faced, furious. Jill’s eyes were wide.

The glow in Caden’s eyes faded. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he hit the plating with a thud.

Jace ran past Jill and Tuck’s horrified faces, past the void of Caden’s mind, down the stairs, and away—anywhere, anywhere but here.

Jace had made up his mind.

All his belongings were packed into a small bag that sat beside him on the bed. There wasn’t much in it—a few changes of clothes, a journal, some dried meat. Now all he was waiting for was nightfall.

There was a knock at the door of his room.

It had been a day and a half, and he’d ventured out only long enough to take care of necessities. His mother left food at his door occasionally, but so far she’d had the decency not to try to talk to him. His father had tried, at first, until Jace had worn him down.

“Go away,” said Jace. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

From in his room, he could almost forget about the rest of the world. He brushed the edges of other minds—his parents, neighbors, the occasional wind mage—but from this distance he could only feel impressions, not fully formed thoughts.

“Jace,” his mother said through the door. “I’m worried about you.”

She was close, close enough that he could read her if he wanted. He didn’t. He didn’t want to see inside anyone’s mind ever again. He didn’t want to unearth their darkest secrets, didn’t want to control them or manipulate them, and above all didn’t want to see himself through their eyes—small, awkward, vulnerable.

“Fine,” he said. “Come in.”

She opened the door a crack and smiled at him. Without hearing her thoughts, he couldn’t tell whether the smile was genuine or forced. He couldn’t tell much of anything.

She sat down next to him on his bed, glancing at his packed bag but saying nothing. Ranna Beleren was a healer, on call for emergencies. She had the tender patience of one who had seen far worse, but understood that all pain is real.

“What did they tell you?” he asked.

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

“Tuck tried to kill me,” said Jace. “Did they mention that?”

She shook her head.

“They were beating me up again,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do so I…I don’t know. I just…figured out a secret of Tuck’s and started talking.”

“He says you read his mind.”

Jace hugged his knees. “I don’t know how I do it,” he said. “I…hear people thinking. Sometimes I don’t even know if it’s them or me thinking.”

“You’re a telepath?” said his mother. She sat up straight.

Jace could see the wheels turning. He wanted to know what she was thinking, but he held back. He could wait.

“You’re a telepath.” This time it was a statement rather than a question. “My son the quick learner, the boy who always knew when his mother needed a hug, needed his love. My son the telepath.” She was smiling.

“You don’t think I’m a freak?”

She shook her head. “I think you are perfect and I love you, no matter what.”

Jace knew that was true, though whether by his abilities or not, he couldn’t say.

“How’s Caden?” asked Jace. “Have you heard?”

His mother’s lips pursed. “He’s still out,” she said. “The healers aren’t quite sure what to do.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Jace said.

“I know.”

Jace walked out into the common room, rubbing his eyes. His breakfast sat on the table, cold.

After the conversation with his mother, he’d decided to stay a little while longer and see if matters improved. Occasionally he ventured out of his room, sharing tense, quiet mealtimes with his parents. But he and his father hardly spoke to each other, and he didn’t dare leave the apartment. It had been three days.

He wolfed down three greasy sausages and half a plate of cold eggs before he noticed that his parents were both standing in the common room waiting for him. His father radiated impatience, his mother concern.

Jace smoothed his hair self-consciously and turned. “What’s going on?”

Jace’s father opened his mouth, but his mother spoke first. “There’s someone here to see you,” she said. “Someone who can help.”

Jace looked around.

“Out on the observation deck,” said his father. “He can’t fit in here.”

Jace resisted the urge to peek into his father’s mind, to learn what sort of helper they’d found who couldn’t fit inside their apartment. He still caught glimpses into his parents’ thoughts without meaning to, and the ghosts of impressions from passersby. But he hadn’t done anything on purpose since the accident, and he tried not to do anything at all.

“Who is he?”

“He’s an arbiter,” Jace’s father said. “His job is to negotiate an end to the war. But he’s also a…a mage, um, like you. He knows how to….”

“He knows how to help you control your abilities,” said Jace’s mother.

The other kids were in school, at least, so they weren’t there to stare at him as Jace and his parents made their way to the observation deck. But by now everyone in Silmot’s Crossing had probably heard about what happened. As they climbed, people stared at him, or hurried away, or whispered to each other behind their hands.

As though that would stop me.

They didn’t hate him. They were afraid of him. And they should be, shouldn’t they? He’d dug around in Tuck’s memories just to find a way to hurt him, and when Jace's life was on the line he’d rammed his way into Caden’s head without hesitation.

He and his parents climbed the final set of steps to the observation deck, a section of ring with one open wall and a set of railings. Standing there, resting on its haunches, was a sphinx.

Art by Slawomir Maniak

He towered above Jace with a regal, bearded face, enormous paws, and an elaborate mantle of gold and mirrored silver, his feathered wings folded behind him.

“My name is Alhammarret. And you, Jace Beleren, are a mind mage of unusual talent.”

This thought, Jace knew with certainty, was not his own.

“How did you…?”

“Respond in kind, please, if you can,” said the booming voice in his head.

“Like this?” thought Jace.

“Precisely.”

“A ‘mind mage?’” thought Jace. “But doesn’t a mage cast spells? I don’t know any spells.”

“What you do is spellcasting,” said Alhammarret. “You intuited the spells involved, rather than being taught.”

“So if I’m casting spells, then…you’re here to make me stop?”

Alhammarret smiled. “No. I want to train you, so you do not have to.”

“Train me where?” Jace glanced back at his parents. “Here?”

“No,” said Alhammarret. “The chance to train a promising mind mage is rare, but not so rare that I can abandon my other duties. You would come with me, as my apprentice.”

“For how long?”

“Years.”

The suspicious looks, the whispers, the fear. He could leave it all behind—along with his parents’ love and support.

“Do they know what you’re proposing?” he asked.

“I’ve spoken with them about it, yes. They want what’s best for you. And in this case, what’s best is to get you out of this provincial backwater so you can grow to your true potential. Yours is a rare gift. Don’t squander it here.”

Jace looked back at his parents again. His mother nodded encouragement. His father at least must be relieved. Education is your ticket out of here.

Jace didn’t bother turning back to Alhammarret.

“I’m ready,” he said.

After Jace had gathered his things and said his goodbyes, Alhammarret settled down and nodded for Jace to climb onto his back. Jace climbed up and braced his legs against the silver mantle, hoping that was what it was for.

Jace looked down at his parents and the gathered crowd. Tuck and Jill were there, hard-eyed. Already, the people of Silmot’s Crossing looked small and distant.

“I’ll come back,” he said to his parents. “I promise.”

He looked Tuck in the eyes. “And if you harm my family, I’ll take your mind apart, one squalid little memory at a time.”

Tuck flinched.

Jace’s parents waved. Alhammarret stood, stretched, and launched himself from the observation deck.

Flight! He’d taken a few tumbles in the clutches of a wind mage, but this was nothing like that. They soared above the landscape, heading away from the trail of mage-rings in a direction Jace had never bothered to think about. His home of thirteen years receded, became a speck, and vanished into the distance.

“That was unkind,” said Alhammarret.

Jace winced.

“You…?” He stopped. Alhammarret hadn’t given him leave to speak normally and, in any case, the wind made spoken conversation impossible. “You heard that?”

“Of course,” said Alhammarret. “This is something you must adjust to. Up to now, you have been, in effect, the only mind mage in existence. You’ve never had to consider the implications of dealing with another telepath.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Jace.

“I will train you to control your powers. I will help you hone them, to accomplish feats of telepathy you never dreamed possible, to glean deeply hidden information…and to do all this without hurting anyone. If you use these abilities to inflict intentional harm, that will be the end of your training…and possibly, depending on the severity of the harm, your life. Do you understand?”

“Fully,” said Jace. “I was just trying to scare him.”

“Tread that path carefully,” said the sphinx. “In time, you will become more terrifying than you can imagine. And fear, once inspired, can seldom be eased.”

They flew on in silence for a time. The landscape beneath them had shifted, high steppe giving way to rolling fields and broad, shallow marshes. Only the trails of mage-rings, dozens of miles apart, seemed familiar.

“This is Separatist territory, isn’t it?” asked Jace.

“These lands are claimed by the Trovians, yes. ‘Separatist’ is a politically charged term.”

“And you’re an arbiter?”

“I am,” said Alhammarret. “So why is the war still going?”

Jace flushed. That was going to be his next question. Mind mage!

“The war is a generation old,” said Alhammarret. “The arbiters negotiate a peace every few years, when both sides are exhausted enough to want it. Then one side breaks the truce, and the war continues. We don’t even bother with permanent peace anymore—it’s simpler, and fairer, if both sides know from the outset when hostilities will resume.”

“Why not let one side win?” asked Jace.

“The Ampryn and the Trovians fight for control of the Core,” the sphinx said. “But only one of them holds it at any given time, and that side reaps the benefits of the mage-ring network. So why are the mage-rings unharmed? Why, when the Ampryn hold the Core, do the Trovians not destroy the mage-rings to deny the Ampryn their power source?”

Jace had never thought about that. “Because…Because they think they can take the Core, and they want the mage-rings intact for their own use when they do.”

“Precisely,” said Alhammarret. “And as long as each side thinks it can win, that balance holds, and the mage-rings stand. Cities are abandoned intact rather than leveled. Roads and bridges are given up, to be recaptured later. If that ever changes—if either side finds itself in existential danger—then it will destroy everything as it retreats, to deny it to the other. Civilization on Vryn might take centuries to recover—if it ever did.”

Jace felt a sudden rush of vertigo.

“That,” said Alhammarret, “not mere loss of life, is what the arbiters seek to prevent. As usual, matters are not as simple as they seem.”

They stopped at night, and Alhammarret arranged lodgings in the effectively neutral confines of a mage-ring. It was different than Jace’s home ring—bigger, and recently repaired. Neither side wanted to harm the rings, but collateral damage was inevitable.

After a few days, they reached their destination, a wall of rock that rose above the rolling plain. Alhammarret flew higher, his powerful wings pumping. He alighted on a broad landing platform, shook his wings, and knelt so Jace could dismount.

“Welcome home, Jace Beleren.”

Home. Jace hoped this could be home.

Jace paused at the foot of the last flight of stairs.

He’d spent two years as the sphinx’s apprentice, learning the full abilities—and limitations—of his own mind. At fifteen, he was taller, and smarter, and more powerful than he had been before. He could peel the military secrets from a sleeping guard’s mind without learning anything about the man’s family, could cloud thoughts and change minds without causing any damage at all. He hoped his parents would be proud. Although honing his telepathy had been the primary focus of his training, Alhammarret hadn’t neglected other disciplines of magic, and Jace had grown into a talented illusionist.

He’d expected, at first, that his training would consist mainly of going to negotiations and learning what he could from the ambassadors’ minds. And he did accompany Alhammarret to talks, and the sphinx did ask him, afterward, what he’d learned from the negotiators’ thoughts—which was never anything interesting. Jace asked early in his training why either side even consented to parley with a telepath.

“To keep each other honest,” the sphinx explained with a twinkle in his eye. “They learned long ago not to send anyone who knew anything they didn’t want spoken aloud.”

There were long hours studying magical theory in the sphinx’s library; mental sparring sessions out on the landing pad; and a constant battery of questions, challenges, quizzes, and tests. There were puzzle boxes and ciphers, visitors real and illusionary, even the occasional trap. And Jace could not read Alhammarret in the slightest. For the first time in his life, Jace was truly challenged by his studies. He’d even blacked out during illusion training at one point, his own illusions overwhelming his mind with their insistence of reality.

Art by Yohann Schepacz

A few months ago, Alhammarret had started sending Jace out to gather information. Alhammarret called them “training missions,” but they were quite real. Under cover of darkness and cloaked by illusions, Jace would sneak into a camp of one of the opposing sides. There, whether through telepathy or mundane sleuthing, he would learn about the army’s battle plans, and return to report to Alhammarret.

He’d protested at first, but the information they learned from these missions helped Alhammarret keep the peace. Often, just mentioning battle plans at a joint meeting was enough to keep the front quiet for a month or two.

Finally, with Alhammarret’s guidance, Jace was using his abilities to help people. And his most recent mission had gone particularly well.

He climbed up the steps and entered Alhammarret’s study.

Alhammarret gazed out the great circular window. He didn’t turn when Jace entered. They seldom bothered with eye contact, and sometimes spoke to each other from different rooms, though Jace’s range was still much more limited than the sphinx’s.

“Welcome back,” said Alhammarret. “What have you learned?”

Jace could not read Alhammarret’s mind, and, out of courtesy, Alhammarret did not read his without invitation, except when they were practicing mental defenses. Jace was no longer helpless, but his mentor could still blast through his mental blocks without effort.

By way of answer, Jace opened up a particular set of memories to Alhammarret’s scrutiny. Jace had learned from a high-ranking Separatist officer of Trovian designs for a surprise springtime offensive. They planned to cross the Rime Marshes before the thaw and drive for the Ampryn Core. It would be a brutal campaign for both sides, bringing the fighting to previously untouched civilian territories and potentially breaking the Ampryn stranglehold on the Core States. And Jace had learned of it without letting the Trovians know who he was or what he had gleaned from them.

Art by Cynthia Sheppard

“Excellent work,” said Alhammarret. “I expect the look on the Trovian ambassador’s face when I mention this at the next negotiation will be…gratifying.”

The sphinx turned and padded down the curved steps, past Jace. “Come,” he said. “I want to review the maps while your memory is fresh, and mark their exact routes.”

The room looked nothing like the paltry library in Silmot’s Crossing, with its collection of dog-eared mana dynamics manuals, outdated history books, and the occasional work of badly written fiction. There were no books here, but racks of crystalline spheres. Alhammarret’s great paws couldn’t turn pages, and his library contained more information than could be held in an entire mage-ring full of books.

Alhammarret worked several great pedals, like a pipe-organ’s, and aligned one of the data-spheres with the projector. A map of the Rime Marshes sprang into being in the center of the library.

Jace painted illusions onto the map, showing the planned troop movements. As he did so, his mind wandered.

Unquestionably, he was growing more powerful. He’d had to fight his way out of the Trovian camp, but he’d cleaned up after himself. He’d gotten everything he went for, nobody who’d seen him was going to remember him, and he hadn’t done any permanent damage. Even a few months ago, that kind of operation would have been beyond him. Soon enough, he’d be a better mind mage than….

The sphinx was distracted, pulling up more maps and plotting Jace’s information on them, following the Trovian army’s path into the heartland.

Jace had not tested Alhammarret’s defenses in a long time.

He’d be caught, of course. Alhammarret always knew when Jace tried to read him. Jace could argue, reasonably, that it was part of his training—judging when a target’s defenses were down.

He looked inside Alhammarret’s mind.

The sphinx’s thoughts were immense and powerful, a buffeting cyclone of mental force. Jace’s brief explorations had always run up against it like a wall. This time, though, with effort, he was able to slip into the wind….

A flood of sensations, of memories, overtook him.

He was looking down at himself, practicing illusions, concentrating hard to control a few wisps of light and sound. He looked so young.

Something was wrong. Blue-white energy crackled in his eyes. The illusions swirled around him faster and faster.

And then

he began

to fade….

Within the swirling illusions, Jace vanished entirely.

Art by Ryan Barger

Alhammarret reached out with a tendril of Æther, into the void between worlds (plural!), and pulled the boy back.

Planeswalker.

Jace stirred. He sat up. He asked what had happened.

And Alhammarret wiped the incident from the young man’s mind.

The library. His own eyes. The real Alhammarret regarded him, eyes shrewd.

“Jace?”

“There,” said Jace, illuminating a section of the map. “Sorry.”

“You’re exhausted,” said Alhammarret. “No more bravado. Rest.”

Jace went to his room and shut the door with no intention of opening it. Alhammarret would know. If he didn’t already. How long until he wiped Jace’s memory again? Had this happened before? Was there any way to know?

Planeswalker.

Whatever that was, Alhammarret seemed to think Jace was one. That there were worlds beyond Vryn. That Jace could travel to them.

He tried. Nothing happened.

He’d awakened as a planeswalker, drifted out into the Æther. But if he couldn’t remember it…how could he do it again?

Alhammarret had his best interests at heart. Someday the old sphinx surely planned to tell him, to apologize for the deception, to explain that Jace simply hadn’t been ready. Even purely out of self-interest, Alhammarret had to covet a planeswalker apprentice.

As long as this information was in Jace’s head, Alhammarret could read it. And if Alhammarret could read it, he would wipe Jace’s mind again, and Jace would lose his chance of ever learning the truth. He had to defend his mind. But any departure from his usual behavior would draw suspicion, and suspicion would draw scrutiny, and scrutiny would reveal his secret.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his desk and began to write—in a small, cramped hand that the sphinx might not be able to read even if he found it—what he had seen, and how he had seen it. He included as many details as he could, and warned himself what would happen if Alhammarret found out. When he was done, he wrote the date on the top, folded the paper carefully, and hid it in his desk drawer.

Then, slowly and very, very carefully, Jace made himself forget what he had seen, forget writing it down, forget forgetting.

He had a headache.

He found the paper several times over the next few weeks. Each time, he was furious. Each time, he wondered what to do. And each time, to keep it from Alhammarret, he removed his memory of finding it.

It was the Ampryn camp this time.

They stood on ceremony. Avoiding soldiers on drill was like sneaking past a statue. Peek in one mind, learn the patrol schedule, and you could walk right in.

There were more soldiers than he expected—too many for a lowly command post. Someone important was visiting.

That meant more risk. He should return to Alhammarret at once, and try another time.

But it also meant more information, didn’t it?

He peered into a few more soldiers’ minds until he found his new quarry. A general was visiting the front, a grizzled and decorated veteran of the war. The general had brought two squads of elite guards with him, and two of them guarded the door of the general’s tent at all times.

Under cover of darkness, while the lamps in the tent were still lit, Jace stepped over the sleeping forms of the two door guards.

Art by Cynthia Sheppard

There were three people in the tent. Jace sent two into the arms of sleep and turned to the general, who opened his mouth to yell for guards. No sound came out.

“Hello, General,” said Jace. “This will only take a moment.”

He dove in.

The general was a strong-willed man, resistant to Jace’s probing to some degree, but he was not a mind mage, nor any kind of magic-user. Jace broke through his natural defenses and saw…

The entire Trovian battle plan for the coming campaign hovered before him, an illusory map that matched the contours of the land to the smallest detail. Their plan was audacious…and without proper countermeasures, it was going to work.

“You’re sure this is genuine?” the general asked.

“Positive,” said the hooded figure. “Has our source ever misled you before?”

“No,” he said. “Nor the renegades, I’m sure.”

“Of course,” said the figure. “When your business is information, reputation is everything.”

“Of course,” he said.

The hooded man—boy, really, lanky and cocksure—knew much more than he was willing to tell…like the identity of this source. For the good of the Ampryn, he ought to seize the young man, torture the name of this source out of him, and….

“It wouldn’t do any good,” said the kid. “He doesn’t tell me much.” The boy’s eyes glinted beneath the hood.

“Fine,” he said. “Take your payment and go. And tell your source there’s more where that came from, any time he has intel.”

“I’ll tell him,” said the kid. He pocketed the money and turned, and the general caught a glimpse of his face….

Dimly, from the outside world, Jace heard yelling. He’d taken too long.

He was trapped. Trapped in a mind, trapped in a memory, frozen, staring at his own face behind that damned hood, in a conversation whose entire context was a mystery to him.

He pulled…

…and he was out.

The general slumped in front of him, eyes vacant.

Running footsteps. The tent flap opened. Jace turned.

Three guards. He waved a hand, and illusions swarmed around them.

The general was breathing, but his mind was blank.

I’m sorry.

Jace dove out of the tent and ran into the night, and kept running until he could go no farther.

When Jace returned to Alhammarret’s lair, he went straight to his room and packed his things. He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t care.

While he was packing, he found a note, in his own handwriting, warning him of Alhammarret’s duplicity, revealing his own nature.

One more outrage. One more lie.

Jace scribbled another few lines on the paper, crammed it in his pocket, and wiped his memory of it again. Maybe he’d get to keep that one.

He kept his thoughts locked up as tightly as he could. If Alhammarret wanted to know what was on his mind, the sphinx would have to break it open.

He checked the library and the study. Empty.

He could leave. He wanted no part of the sphinx’s games anymore.

But he had to know.

He headed up to the landing pad. Alhammarret was there, sitting on his haunches, waiting for him.

“Welcome back,” said Alhammarret. “What have you learned?”

“You tell me,” said Jace. He spoke, having no desire to give the sphinx the slightest opening. He raised every mental defense he knew of.

“Ah,” said Alhammarret. “I take it you’ve learned something that displeased you.” The sphinx’s voice in his head was louder now, insistent.

“Not at all,” said Jace. “But it’s been a while since we practiced mental combat, hasn’t it?”

“It has. You are more powerful now. You could hurt yourself.”

“Hurt you, you mean?”

“Unlikely,” said the sphinx.

“And what if I fell into the hands of an enemy mind mage? We can’t be the only ones, can we? Test me. Help me find my limits. Pry the information out of me.”

Alhammarret stood up, and the full force of his mind hit Jace like a storm front.

Art by Lin Yan

Jace had expected it to feel like an invasion, an alien force. But it was an overwhelming presence, a rush of thought and sensation enveloping his own. Alhammarret could rip Jace's mind apart. But to do that, he had to read it, and when he read it, Jace could do the same. Finally, he saw the true shape of the last two years, saw the perilous edge he’d been dangling from all this time.

Alhammarret had played him. He’d used Jace as a go-between, to gather information, deliver it, and learn more just in the delivery. And every time, he’d wiped Jace’s memory of it, taken the money for himself, and kept the war going. If your business was negotiating peace, where was the profit in actually achieving it?

Now Alhammarret knew everything, and settled into the recesses of Jace’s mind to wipe out the offending memories, to salvage this useful asset if he could. And destroy it if he couldn’t.

Jace struck first.

The sphinx was more powerful. But here, in Jace’s head, he was also vulnerable, provided Jace was willing to damage his own mind in the process. And Alhammarret was too arrogant and too cowardly to consider that possibility.

Jace felt himself falling backward, upward, outward. He could not remember his home, his mother’s face, or the sound of his own name. But the sphinx had it worse.

Alhammarret had forgotten how to breathe.

He slumped forward, gasping for breath, and the outline of his head was the last thing the planeswalker saw before he broke

into

pieces

and

walked…

Art by Eric Deschamps

RAVNICA

He hit the ground, hard, on his back. It was bright. And loud. And busy.

He had a headache.

The shapes moving around him resolved themselves into people, and the sounds into voices, and the headache into thoughts that were not his own.

“Watch it,” said a voice, as its owner stepped around him.

Ought to report you to the Boros for reckless teleportation.

Boros?

“Outta the way!” yelled another voice, and he looked up just in time to roll out of the path of a cart pulled by some kind of woolly, hooved beast with wide, sweeping horns.

Came out of nowhere. Some poor Izzet experimental subject, probably.

He scrambled to his feet. People were staring at him. He looked as bad as he felt, sweaty and pale and filthy. He pulled his scarf up around his face and dashed to the side of the road.

I’m not an experimental subject. I’m…I’m…

I’m in trouble.

Fine. Table that.

He walked as fast as he could without seeming to hurry. He reached out, carefully, into the minds around him. It was a cacophony, a mad tangle of voices, and half of them weren’t even human.

Vagrant. Thief. Poor kid. Wretch.

His headache was getting worse.

Still, he was able to snatch scraps of meaning from the din. This was the garment district, and his clothes—ringer garb, some buried part of him said—looked like rags by comparison. Some holiday called Rauck-Chauv was coming up soon. A group known as “Orzhov” seemed to own this area, or politically control it, or somewhere in between. Hundreds of minds, and not one of them was thinking about anything outside the city. Was that strange? Maybe city folk were like that.

He spotted at least two distinct law enforcement agencies, and stayed out of their sight as much as possible. He needed to get somewhere where he’d draw less attention. He seized on the seediest, grimiest thoughts, the minds that wore the clothes that looked most like his, and followed them like a thread.

In ten minutes he was somewhere else, a district where the alleys were narrower and the shadows darker, and everyone was focused on their own business.

He walked on, mindful of ambush, reaching out to the minds around him for any scrap of information that could help him.

At last, cradled like a treasure within the mind of a filthy, hungry girl, he found it:

Emmara Tandris.

She took in strays. But where?

Ovitzia.

Good enough.

The door swung open to reveal a statuesque woman with long, pointed ears, elegant garb, and milk-white eyes. Her thoughts were labyrinthine, hidden deep beneath the surface.

She’s beautiful.

“If you’ve come only to admire me,” she said, “I’m afraid I haven’t the time.”

“You’re a mind reader?” he said. He immediately regretted it.

The elf smiled. “No. You’re a teenager.”

He flushed, and just for a moment, he saw himself through her eyes: filthy, awkward, bleary-eyed, and readable as a book.

“I’m from…” out of town, he almost said, but he still had no idea what that meant here, “another district. I need a place to stay. I heard you take in people like me.”

“Sometimes. What’s your name?”

He flickered through the thoughts around him, digging for a local name that wouldn’t sound conspicuous.

“Berrim,” he said, after just slightly too long, plucking the name from the mind of a passing servant. “My name is Berrim.”

It seemed a harmless lie, and far better than admitting the truth. For all he knew, it was true.

“Come in…Berrim,” said Emmara. “Let’s see about getting you some new clothes.”

He was safe. He was clean. He was fed. He finally had some time to think. Could he remember anything at all?

He traced illusions in the air, random shapes to help him think. Blobs, and lines, and rings.

Silmot’s Crossing.

The thought bubbled up from nowhere, accompanied by the image of a towering, ring-shaped construction. The only way he was sure it was his own was that there wasn’t anybody else around to have it.

A shape coalesced in front of him—an elongated ring, open at the bottom, with a circle floating in the middle. He had no idea what it meant, if it meant anything at all.

Jace.

My name is Jace Beleren.

So there was something in there, waiting for him to dig it out.

And who is Jace Beleren? Is he a good man? Is he kind?

He willed away the shape and sat, alone, farther from home than he’d even known was possible.

He’d have to wait and see.

Art by Jaime Jones

3

The Fourth Pact

by James Wyatt

Art by Chase Stone

GIFT OF THE RAVEN MAN

A man died somewhere nearby—too near—wasting his last breath on an inarticulate cry that only his killer and Liliana Vess could hear. Liliana hurried away from the sound, putting as many twisted trees between herself and the killer as she could.

She'd grown up walking the tracks and trails of the Caligo Forest and knew them as well as anyone—certainly better than any of the soldiers fighting and dying under its branches now. Even at night, the woods felt like home to her, with owls and nightingales calling softly among the dark boughs. But on this night the forest had become a battlefield, and the only calls were the screams of the dying and the harsh croak of ravens squabbling over the flesh of the dead.

Art by Karla Ortiz

She stopped and listened, straining her ears for any sound of pursuit, some indication that she'd been detected. No human soldier came behind her, she was sure—just one raven hopping and fluttering from branch to branch behind her, waiting for her to die.

"Not tonight, bird," she whispered. "Josu is depending on me."

The thought of her brother—delirious with fever as he lay on death's door back at their father's house—quickened her step, and soon the sounds of battle faded behind her. If no one else would brave the forest to find the esis root that would cure him, then Liliana would.

"I'm ready," she told the bird. "I'll make him well, and together we'll crush these raiders."

The raven croaked.

"Don't you laugh at me." She stooped to the ground and picked up a pebble to throw at it, but when she lifted her head the bird was gone.

In its place stood a man, his features hidden in the shadows of his cowled coat. She threw the pebble anyway; it tapped his shoulder and fell back to the ground. He drew back his hood as Liliana fumbled with the knife at her belt.

He was tall and had a noble air, dressed in a suit of black and gold that showed no signs of his passage through the trees and brambles. White hair crowned his head, tousled by his hood, but the hair at his temples was black and swept back over his ears. His eyes—strangely gold, like the embroidery on his clothing—seized and held her gaze.

"I'm not here to harm you, Liliana Vess," the man said.

"You know my name," she said, gripping her dagger. "Somehow that doesn't inspire me with trust."

He held up his empty hands. "Your father is our lord and general. Of course I know you."

"You've been following me?"

"Like you, I'd rather lie low in the woods than end up a headless corpse dragged behind the horses of your father's foes, my skin stretched over their shields and my skull dancing through the trees."

Art by Chris Rahn

As he spoke, Liliana thought she heard hoof beats in the distance. "I have to go," she said.

"But where will you go?"

"The glade…"

"Where the esis root used to grow?"

She scowled. "How did you know…wait. 'Used to grow?'"

"You don't know? They burned it."

"The raiders?"

"Their skin-witches did. It's a circle of ash now, where they chant their rites and raise more soldiers to fight your father."

"No," Liliana said.

Turning her back on the strange man, she ran, heedless of the noise she made as she tore through bushes and stumbled over roots. She smelled the smoke long before she reached the glade, and stopped her rush when she saw the light of gleaming embers.

A raven's wings beat the air behind her, and she turned. The golden-eyed man stood, looking down at the ground.

"So much death," he said.

Liliana dropped her gaze and started in surprise when her eyes met those of a dead man lying at her feet. Corpses littered the ground—soldiers in her father's colors, black and gold. Some clutched horrible wounds, some carried terrible burns, and some were headless, their skin flayed off their glistening fat and muscle by the skin-witches' dark magic. Not one carrion bird flapped among them.

"And without the esis root," the man said, "your brother will be next."

"No!" she cried. "I'm not going to let that happen."

"No, you're not." The steady certainty of his voice only exacerbated the panic that pounded in Liliana's chest.

"There has to be another way," she said. "More esis root…another glade."

"You know there isn't another glade."

"What are you saying?" Liliana fought the urge to slap the infuriating man. "You know another way to save Josu? What is it?"

The man pointed in the direction of the glade. She turned and looked into the trees, where a dim glow of embers smoldered in the darkness.

His voice was right behind her, his breath in her ear: "You know."

But she didn't know. For years she had studied faithfully at Lady Ana's side, memorizing the healing properties of roots and herbs, learning the signs and symptoms of hundreds of illnesses and the best treatment for dozens of kinds of wounds. Esis root was the only possible cure. "You said the glade was burned, the root gone."

"You know more than that."

All of her studies, her lessons, the daily routines of crushing herbs and mixing potions—nothing else suggested a possible cure.

"Unless…" she murmured.

"You know."

Of course! She nearly jumped at the unexpected thought. Over the years, she had expanded her studies beyond what Lady Ana could teach, dabbling in magic that took a more…direct approach to life and death. All in service to her work as a healer, of course. She knew magic that could turn even a burned and shriveled esis root into a cure for Josu. At least in theory.

Art by Bastien L. Deharme

But how did he know that?

"I'm not ready," she said. "I have so much more to learn."

"I'm sure Josu will wait while you complete your studies."

Liliana swore violently under her breath and pulled away from the man, taking a few steps closer to the burnt glade.

He followed her, speaking right into her ear. "You can't afford to wait, Liliana Vess. You know enough now. You are already a great mage, though you won't admit it to yourself. And you will be greater still, once you embrace your power."

Her panic was changing, turning into a heady rush of excitement. She was powerful, but she had always hidden her forbidden knowledge away, afraid of censure. To embrace it, damn the consequences—she had to admit that, like other forbidden things, exulting in her power sounded like fun.

She wheeled on him, planting a hand on his chest and pushing him back. "How do you know so much about my magic?" She could feel the magic surge inside her, the chill prickle of death's approach.

"I suppose both of us are more than we seem," he said.

Liliana had always known it: she was more, so much more than anyone had ever seen in her before. And now she would prove it. She felt something inside her break free, like a dark flower blossoming in a deep swamp. Spells came to her mind, weaving together into a desperate, terrifying plan.

"Yes," the man said. "You see it now. Esis root is a powerful cure, but it was the safe course. You know a mightier one."

She did, she realized with surprise. Stretching out her senses, she felt the power that brewed in all the rot and decay of the nearby bog. She drew the mana into herself with a grim smile, only vaguely aware that the strange man had vanished again.

With each step forward, the power that had broken free inside her seemed to blossom a little more, solidifying her resolve. It propelled her, urging her to embrace her strength. A dozen paces brought her out of the sheltering trees and into the clearing.

It was now a blasted circle of ash with smoldering embers in a ring around the edge. Terror struggled with fury in her heart as she took in the scene, remembering the peaceful glade it had once been. Three withered crones stood back to back in the center, eyes closed as they sent their spells winging through the wood to the battlefields across her father's lands. Three ghastly sentinels—grisly skulls with dangling bits of flesh, sickly purple light gleaming in their empty eye sockets—floated around the periphery.

Six foes, and Liliana stood alone. But Josu's life depended on her, and the power blossoming within her was more than enough.

"Hello, ladies," Liliana cooed.

One of the floating skulls bobbed toward her, a ghostly shriek rising from its gaping, fleshless mouth. She answered it with a chant of her own, a string of low syllables that echoed in the dead air. A knife of utter blackness shot from her outstretched finger and stabbed through the skull, severing the necromantic energy that gave it the semblance of life, and it tumbled to the ground.

The skin-witches opened their milk-white eyes and turned to her as one.

Twice more, Liliana pointed, and the two remaining skulls fell into the ash, kicking up little clouds where they landed.

"I think you need some stronger bodyguards," she said. Her confidence was building, replacing her fear with cold resolve. She was good at this, she realized. It was so easy, once she embraced it. So much easier than her dreary studies under Lady Ana. And it felt so good!

The skin-witches began a chant, their three voices speaking as one, and pain danced over Liliana like claws tracing marks in her flesh.

She screamed.

But she turned her scream into another spell, using the pain to focus her mind. The spell rolled from her mouth like the tolling of a bell, and a deathly chill soothed her burning skin as her magic took shape. Three spectral hands floated up from the ground at the crones' feet, trailing wisps of shadow like ghostly arms.

Art by David Palumbo

Now it was the witches' turn to howl in pain as the hands disappeared into their chests and emerged from their backs, clutching glowing motes of golden light. Their screams turned to pathetic moans as they sank to the ground, clutching their chests with what little strength Liliana's spell had left them. One skin-witch stretched out a hand toward her and mumbled something that might have been a spell, but Liliana felt nothing.

The three spectral hands converged on one spot near Liliana's feet and dived back into the earth with their prizes. With a smirk, Liliana started to bend down, but the harsh croak of a raven behind her startled her and she spun around. One of the corpses she'd seen outside the glade was on its feet now, shambling toward her.

"So you cast a spell after all," she called to the skin-witch behind her. "A valiant effort, but I think it was your last."

With a deep breath, she focused her will and simply snuffed out the semblance of life that animated the zombie's flesh. Behind her, the witch gave a strangled cry.

Liliana looked down at the soldier's body, his torn armor, and his blood-stained uniform. "So much death," she said. She lifted her eyes and met the gaze of the raven perched above her. "And this is just the beginning."

At her feet, a golden glow emerged from the ash where the spectral hands had sunk. Sinking to her knees, she plunged her own hand into the ground and seized her prize. When she lifted her hand again, it clutched a shriveled, blackened chunk of esis root, glowing softly gold. It would make a potion far more powerful than what she'd originally planned, infused with the life she'd stolen from the skin-witches. The man had been right—she'd known what to do. Of course she'd known.

Cradling the root to her chest, she walked back into the forest toward her father's house.

She grinned up at the bird as she passed it. "Thanks, Raven Man."

PROMISE OF THE VOID

The blackened esis root made a potion that glowed gold like dawn warming the morning fog, reassuring Liliana of the life-giving power it held. She cradled it in her palms as she drifted through the clamor of the house, contemplating the light that had come from her dark magic. The servants bowed and backed away as she approached, but quickly resumed their shouting and scrambling behind her.

"Cold water!"

"New linens!"

"Where's that broth?"

"Water!"

She ignored all the cries, convinced that the elixir she carried would soon enough bring an end to all the worry and commotion.

"Lady Liliana has returned!" one servant called out ahead of her, and at last she looked up.

She stood in the hall outside Josu's room. In answer to the servant's cry, Lady Ana stepped out of the room and put her hands on her hips, frowning at the vial in Liliana's hands.

"That's not esis root," the healer said.

Liliana paused, her confidence faltering in the face of her imperious teacher. But then she heard Josu cry out in the room—"Skulls! Skulls floating through the trees!"—and she remembered what she had gone through to make the potion and what was at stake. She straightened her back and met Lady Ana's imperious gaze.

"It's better," she declared.

Ana scoffed. "I'll be the judge of that. How did you make it? What are the components?"

"This is no time for an examination. Josu is dying!"

"The administration of curatives is not to be rushed," Ana said, folding her arms over her chest. "Some potions can do more harm than good." Her eyes flicked down to the vial in Liliana's hands and her lips curled.

"The witches!" Josu cried from his bed. "No, no, the flames!"

"I made it from esis root," Liliana said, "but I enhanced it."

"Enhanced it? How?"

"The burning!" Josu was screaming, and Liliana could hear the hubbub of servants trying to calm him, to cool his fever, to bring some measure of relief to his torment.

"Stand aside, Lady Ana," she said. "Josu needs to drink this. Now!"

Ana drew herself up, her face reddening. "An apprentice does not address her master that way."

Liliana took a deep breath, steeling herself. It was not just power blossoming inside her—she was opening, her mind expanding, her true self coming to the fore. This was her time. Her brother's life hung in the balance. She knew what she needed to do.

"Then it's time for my apprenticeship to come to an end," she said. "Your power is no match for mine anyway."

"Power? The healing arts aren't about power."

"You don't think so?" Liliana laughed. "Stand back and watch."

She pushed past the healer into her brother's room and fell on her knees at his bedside.

"Stay away from my patient!" Ana snapped.

All the long years of her apprenticeship, that voice had commanded instant obedience, and Liliana almost backed away out of pure reflex. But Josu seized her hand and looked at her—no, past her—and everything else faded away.

"Josu?" she murmured. "Can you hear me?"

"The witches," he said. No longer yelling, he sounded like a frightened child. "They stripped the skin…."

Liliana lifted her glowing vial, and its golden light glimmered in Josu's eyes as he stared at it. "Drink this, Brother." She lifted it to his lips. "It will bring you rest."

"Don't!" Lady Ana made one final protest, but too late.

Art by Izzy

The potion filled Josu's mouth, and a gleaming golden drop spilled down his chin. For a moment fear twisted his face and Liliana worried he might spit out the precious liquid, but then he swallowed, and again, and one more time. Then his eyes closed and he settled back on his pillow.

His only movement was the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Liliana smoothed his hair away from his sweaty forehead, and the hint of a smile came to the corners of his mouth.

"Liliana," he sighed.

Behind her, one of the servants gave a strangled gasp. "He knows her!" the woman said.

Lady Ana harrumphed. "Fine. You've calmed his sleep. Now you can tell me…."

"Lili!" Josu shouted. His eyelids opened wide to reveal two jet black orbs. For an instant, she saw her face reflected in them, but dead—her own eyes rotted away, her skin drawn tight over her bones.

He stiffened, his blank eyes staring up at the ceiling. Liliana noticed a blackened spot on his lip—where her potion had dribbled from his mouth. As she watched, he seemed to shrink. His eyes sank back into his skull and his pale skin grew waxy and tight. His cheekbones jutted from his face and his lips drew back away from his teeth.

"What have you done, child?" Lady Ana whispered. She shouldered Liliana aside and bent over Josu's still form.

Liliana drifted to the foot of the bed, her mind reeling as she stared down at her brother. What had she done? The potion—her potion, brewed by her skill and her magic—hadn't cured him at all.

It had killed him. All her efforts…and the result was worse than if she'd done nothing at all.

Much worse.

Lady Ana stood up from the bedside, her face grave, and began shooing the servants out of the room. Liliana sat on the edge of the bed next to her brother, pressing his cold, rigid hand between hers as if she could restore its warmth.

Then his hand wrenched free of her grasp and seized her throat. Sharp nails bit into her skin.

"So much pain…" Josu said.

He sat up, bringing his face right next to hers. "Where have you sent me?" he asked.

The foul air of his breath stung her nostrils even as she fought to inhale, trying to pry his fingers off her neck.

"So…much…pain!" he screamed, and threw Liliana against the wall. She crumpled to the floor as Lady Ana shrieked.

"Josu," Liliana whispered, "I'm so sorry."

"Sorry!" He staggered to his feet and lurched at her. "You damned me, Sister!" Glaring at her, he brought his clawed fingers to his own neck. "Damned me to endless torment!" He raked his nails down his neck and onto his chest, tearing skin and cloth alike…but not a drop of blood welled in the gashes. "Torment!"

Art by Izzy

Bracing herself against the wall, Liliana fought her way to her feet, edging away from him. But despite the stiffness of his limbs, he was fast, and he caught her neck in his hand again, pressing her back against the plaster.

"Let me help you, Josu," she pleaded. "Come back, come back and we'll make this right."

"Help me?" His voice was a growling whisper in her face. "I am lost to the Void, Lili. Lost! So why do I linger here?"

"I don't know, Brother. I don't know. But we'll fix it. Trust…."

He tightened his grip and choked off her words. "Trust you? Trust you? No!"

"Let go of me," she croaked.

"The Void will have you, Lili. Its hunger will never die. It will have us both."

"Let me go," she said again. Her terror and grief burned away, leaving only cold anger. Memories of the moss-draped trees, clammy air, and reeking water at the heart of the Caligo flitted through her mind as mana streamed into her, chilling her blood and prickling her skin.

"I'll never let you go, little sister. Not anymore. We'll be together, you and I. Joined in this eternal agony!"

"Let go!" Liliana's fury erupted into a blast of livid darkness between them, sending Josu toppling onto the bed as the plaster cracked and crumbled at her back. The shadows danced across his body then disappeared, seeping into his pale skin. He stood upright again, not so stiffly, and glared at her.

"So my sweet little sister dabbled in necromancy," he said. "And turned me into this!" He thrust his hand toward her, and a fountain of shadows flew from his fingertips.

She threw her hands up to protect herself, and the shadows pierced her, tearing at her soul and smashing into the wall behind and around her. Though it left her bitterly cold, Josu's spell didn't harm her as much as it damaged the wall. As the support at her back crumbled into ash, she stumbled and fell amid the debris.

Liliana was dimly aware of the chaos erupting around them, the household staff screaming, running, whimpering in pain or crying in grief. How did it go so wrong? she wondered. She had exulted in the blossoming power within her, but now it seemed to collapse in on itself, leaving a desolate void.

No, she thought. I have to make this right.

Scrambling back as he strode at her again, she tried to think of a spell that could undo what she'd done, somehow take his twisted semblance of life and ignite it into true life again. In the meantime, though, she had to keep him away from her. She tossed spell after spell at him, blasts of darkness and grasping claws of shadow. Over and over he howled in pain, leveling an endless stream of invectives at her. Instead of stopping his advance, though, her spells seemed to make him stronger.

Which made sense, she realized. The magnitude of the lies she had told herself became clear. All this time, she had believed that she'd been studying necromancy from her secret books and doing dark research in order to aid her healing arts. That she could turn the power of death to the service of life and health. That a healer should use every tool at her disposal. But Josu was the result, a horrible fusion of life and death, and all her spells meant to manipulate the life force of the living could do nothing to harm the dead.

And Josu returned every spell with one of his own, smashing walls and shattering windows. Stray blasts, deflected from their intended targets, struck servants and withered their flesh, melted their bones, or consumed their souls.

So much death, she thought. And unless I think of something soon, I'm next.

Josu's relentless assault was taking its toll on her. The mana that suffused her and fueled her magic seemed to dampen the effect of his spells on her, but it wasn't a perfect shield. Her hands were cold, her limbs stiff, and her thoughts slowing as the magic of death sapped her strength, body and soul.

Josu—the thing that had been Josu—stretched out his hands and shadow engulfed her. Claws of darkness clutched at her, lifting her from the ground and snatching at the motes of life and strength that remained in her body. She choked as shadows reached into her mouth, seizing the breath right out of her lungs. She felt as cold as death itself, suffocating as though she'd been buried alive, trapped in the viselike grip of her brother's magic.

He stood right in front of her now, looking up into her eyes, his clawlike hands upraised as if they, not his spell, were holding her in the air and squeezing the life from her.

"Join me, Lili," he said. "All the torment of the Void will be ours to share forever."

Her eyes pleaded with him, but not a glimmer of compassion lit his lifeless black orbs. Finally she closed her eyes, unable to look upon the horror she had created. Death closed in on her and her head swam.

Then, in her moment of utter desolation, something inside Liliana caught fire, a spark of infinite darkness, at once colder than the grip of death and hotter than the sun, dark and endless as the Void but eternally alive, an infinity of possibility, the power of creation itself…and annihilation. She snatched at this new power, seizing this last shred of hope.

Her soul burned in exquisite agony, and Josu's magic dissipated, unable to contain her anymore. She opened her eyes and saw Josu recoiling from her, his shrunken face twisted in shock.

She stretched her hands to her sides and the corpses strewn about in the rubble rose up, her servants to command once more. The mob of zombies lurched at Josu, swallowed him up and overwhelmed him.

Art by Izzy

As Josu struggled against the press of undead flesh, something pulled at her from behind. Whirling around, she saw the ruins of her father's house change. The walls twisted and split, forming dark tree trunks under a shroud of black leaves. Clouds of dust became billowing fog, and the rubble-strewn floor turned into swampy ground strewn with dead leaves and gnarled roots. Her feet didn't move, but she felt that she was being drawn through unspeakable eternities, plucked from the world she knew and thrust into a whole other world.

Then her home was gone, Josu was gone, the zombies, everything she knew was gone, and she sank to her knees on the swampy ground.

ONCE, WE WERE GODS

More than a century later, an old woman stepped from one world into another. The years were a burden on her shoulders as heavy as her grief.

"You're late."

The rumbling voice greeted her before she had fully left the other world behind, and with her first step on the marble floor of the great hall, she felt it vibrating with the power of the voice.

"Not yet," Liliana said with a smirk. "Not ever, if you can help me as you promise." Gazing ahead at the prospect of death—as mundane a death as could be imagined, withering away from age—she had come to seek the aid of the one being in all the planes powerful enough to keep it at bay.

The floor shook again as the dragon chuckled, and Liliana turned to look at him—turned, and raised her head, and stepped back to see more, and still his enormity filled her vision. As vast as the hall was, the great, curled horns atop his head scraped the ceiling and his outstretched wings reached the walls on either side. She suppressed a scowl—Nicol Bolas was trying to intimidate her, to remind her who held the upper hand in their negotiations. Worse, it was working.

"I can help you, Liliana Vess," Bolas said. "But immortality is beyond the reach of us all, now."

Art by D. Alexander Gregory

"Says the thirty-thousand-year-old dragon." Liliana turned her back on him again, staring down at her hands. Creased and spotted with age, her skin hung loose on her bones. She stood as straight as she could manage, unwilling to display her body's frailty in front of the mighty dragon. But it was not just her body—her soul was a withered bloom, bereft of hope.

"How we have fallen," he said. "Once, we were gods, working our private havoc through planes known and unknown."

His words stung. They were Planeswalkers, not gods, but in those first years there had not been much difference. The spark that had ignited in her heart had unlocked greater power than she could ever have imagined, making her immortal and virtually omnipotent, putting the endless ranks of the dead firmly under her command. She had walked the numberless planes of the Multiverse for decades, exerting her will, her whims, on worlds that were powerless to resist her. Only one thing, in those days, had seemed beyond the reach of her magic: undoing what she had done to Josu.

Then the Multiverse reshaped itself, robbing her—and every other Planeswalker—of the godlike power they once had wielded. Some called it the Mending, as if something broken had been repaired, but to Liliana, it seemed the opposite. It broke her beyond any hope of repair. She had spent decades working to regain even a fraction of the magical might she had lost, and it was not enough—not enough to keep death at bay. Josu had promised that they would be together in death, sharing his eternal pain, and Liliana would never let the icy claws of death fulfill that promise.

"You have not fallen so far," Liliana said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.

"You did not know me at my height. I have lost more power than you could learn in a dozen lifetimes."

"Then give me a hundred!" Liliana whirled on him. "Look at me, Bolas! I can feel death breathing down my neck."

"Perhaps that is because it has been such a close companion all these years."

"Not a companion, a tool. Something to be inflicted on others, not embraced."

"I'm sure some of your old teachers would disagree." The floor rumbled with the dragon's amusement again. "Surely you learned from vampires when you went to Innistrad, studied with liches—the masters of necromancy. They would have you embrace death and move beyond it, not fear its approach."

As Nicol Bolas spoke, he lowered his head closer to Liliana's and turned so that she saw her face reflected in one huge, black eye—wrinkled and drawn, her beauty faded, the specter of death haunting her eyes, not too different from what she had seen in Josu's dead, black eyes all those years ago.

Liliana turned away. I am more than I seem, she reminded herself.

"A queen doesn't rule her people by being one of them," she said. "If I'd wanted to go down that path, I'd be on Innistrad right now, not here. So can you help me or not?"

"As I told you, I can put you in touch with the beings that can help you."

"Four demons, you said. And the cost is my soul, right? Payable upon my death?"

"It's not quite that simple."

"Of course not." Liliana sighed. "Nothing is ever simple with you, is it, Bolas?"

"On the contrary, many things that your mind can't even begin to fathom are quite simple to me."

She snorted. "Your modesty is truly breathtaking."

"A simple statement of fact, Liliana Vess. After all, you are merely human."

"'Once, we were gods.' I need that power back, Bolas. Power and youth and strength. Even if it costs my soul."

"Good." The dragon's breath was close, scalding the back of her neck. "But a soul isn't a trinket you can hand over to a demon, or an ember it can seize upon your death. You'll give up your soul, all right—because no one with a shred of soul could possibly undertake the tasks you will perform to pay off your debt."

Liliana tried to suppress a shudder.

"But why should that bother you," the dragon said, "after all that you have already done? You have studied with the greatest necromancers on all the planes. You slaughtered angels. And you bested the one who started you on this path. What did you call him? The Raven Man?"

Liliana nodded absently, thinking of her first encounter with the Raven Man, all those years ago, and the terrible events that followed. She had bested him, as the dragon said, but not killed him—not yet.

"Perhaps you have already given up your soul," Bolas said.

The prospect did bother her, Liliana realized with some surprise. Bolas was right. Since her first encounter with the Raven Man in the Caligo Forest, when she had embraced her power and let it steer her, her life had been one moral compromise after another, an inexorable slide into darkness. What was left that separated her from the wickedest villains in the Multiverse?

Just this moment, she thought, this one instant of hesitation.

Liliana turned and stared into the dragon's unblinking eye. "Let's get this over with."

WRITTEN ON YOUR SKIN

For the fourth time, Nicol Bolas led Liliana from his great marble hall to a plane she didn't recognize. After forging three pacts with three different demons, power surged through her body—yet she was still a rag doll in the dragon's claws.

And she was still old.

The dragon deposited her in another great hall. Leaping flames filled an archway in front of her, but as Bolas withdrew, the flames died down and the fourth demon came—slithered—into view. In place of legs, he had a bulbous tail trailing behind him into the fires. His bestial head jutted forward from his hulking shoulders, dominated by a leering grin that showed his sharp teeth. Two horns, surmounted by an elaborate headdress, swooped out to the sides from a tawny mane. Tattered, leathery wings stretched out from his shoulders. And his long arms trailed sharp claws almost to the ground.

Art by Tianhua X

"Liliana Vess," he said, stooping so his breath washed over her face. His voice was a harsh whisper, and a serpent's tongue flicked out between his teeth as he drew out the end of her name. "I am Kothophed."

"And you know my name, so I guess that's the end of our pleasantries."

The demon barked a short laugh. "Indeed. And I understand I am the fourth of your patrons. Did your other agreements meet your expectations?"

"I am satisfied." Bolas had warned her against telling any of the demons about the others, and she tried to keep even the thought of them from surfacing in her mind.

"Are you? Shall we forego our arrangement, then? You have all you desired?"

She smirked. "I am satisfied with the benefit I reaped from each previous agreement, and I'm sure I will be satisfied with this one when it's complete."

"Oh, but I will be your most demanding master, Liliana. I have great things in mind for you. So if you have the least hesitation, you might want to reconsider. You have gained a great deal of power already."

"That's not enough," she said. Bolas had warned her, too, that if she tried to renege on a bargain, the demons would be free to kill her, and even with the power she'd gained, she doubted she was a match for Kothophed. Dark mana radiated from him like heat from a bonfire.

"So hungry for immortality," the demon said, slithering forward and around her. "But you've gained power enough to sustain your life for decades at least, maybe a century. And you could have your way with the Multiverse in the meantime. Is that not enough?"

"Holding death at arm's length for whatever years are left to me? No, that's not enough. I want to be free of its shadow."

Like I was before Josu, she thought. Young and alive and blissfully unaware of the number of my days.

"But you have already embraced death," the demon said, now behind her. "You've taken it into your soul, stitched it with your Planeswalker spark, woven it into every shred of magical power within you. It casts a very long shadow over you, my dear."

"Everyone's death but my own," she said, more to herself than to the demon.

As she spoke, the room melted away around her and she stood on a barren plain. Corpses littered the field as far as she could see, and ravens hopped from body to body, picking at the tastiest bits.

"I am your death," Kothophed whispered in her ear. "Kill me, and you will never die."

She whirled around, a spell forming on her lips, but the demon was gone. She heard his barking laugh from behind her again, now a dozen yards away.

Liliana stretched out her hands and black birds rose in a storm of flapping wings as corpses across the battlefield lurched to their feet and shambled toward the demon. Kothophed surveyed the field as if counting the zombies, his jackal's grin unwavering.

"Impressive," he called. Then two flicks of the demon's tail sent bodies—lifeless once more—scattering in every direction.

"Just a warm-up," Liliana called back, trying to hide her fear. Bolas had told her the demons had agreed not to kill her, not as long as she held to the terms of the bargain. But Kothophed had seemed eager to break that deal from the start, and this battle didn't feel like a test.

Half a dozen shades, wisps of shadow radiating bone-chilling cold, swept down at the demon, passing through his body but emerging empty-handed on the other side. One such shade could kill a man, seizing his soul and leaving his corpse cold on the ground, but six had no effect on the demon at all.

As Liliana found the rhythm of her spellcasting, she slowly rose from the ground surrounded by an Aura of shadow. She grasped at the demon's life energy herself, trying to draw power from him to fuel her own magic. Kothophed slithered closer to her in response to her pull, and then a wave of power surged out from him and knocked her backward.

Wave after wave of grasping shades, shambling zombies, and specters on great winged shadows answered her frantic summons and rushed at the demon at her command, only to fall at Kothophed's tail, swordlike claws, or gnashing jaws. But they bought her time—time to shape a horror from the bones and flesh of the fallen, a venom-spewing monster with the soul-sucking claws of a specter and the sheer strength of a titan.

For a moment, she thought that Kothophed was actually struggling with the creature. The demon wrestled with it, surging closer to Liliana as the two monsters grappled in a tangle of limbs, claws, and fangs. But as the demon came close, it was clear who was in control of the fight. Kothophed seized the horror and pulled its limbs apart, depositing them at her feet.

Then he seized her.

The demon's cold breath numbed her skin. His claws bit into her flesh. He held her in one great hand. With the other, he drew one claw from the crown of her head to the toes of one foot, slicing deep, scraping against bone. She screamed.

The incision made, the demon peeled back her age-worn skin, pulling it off her like a rabbit's hide. But what Liliana saw beneath was a younger body, slick with blood but supple and smooth. Kothophed set her back on her feet, and she felt solid marble beneath her. The charnel field melted away and she stood once more in the demon's pillared hall.

She looked down. Her black gown remained in place. But her skin, her shape, her posture were those of her younger self, beautiful once more.

"What," she spat, "was that?"

The demon laughed, long and loud.

"If that was supposed to be a test," she said, "then clearly I failed. So why am I still here? Why do I look like I do?"

The demon stifled his laughter and lowered his face until his yellow eyes gazed right into hers. "It was not a test. It was a lesson—one I trust you will never forget."

He reached a claw toward her face again and she winced in anticipation, bringing another barking laugh. "Hold still," he said. "I'm not done with my end of the bargain."

His touch was more gentle, but still agonizing, as he traced the claw in whorls across her face. "You are a Planeswalker," he said as he worked. "That makes you special. You are also one of the most powerful mages in all the planes, and that makes you extraordinary."

Art by Aleksi Briclot

Yes, she thought. So the Raven Man said.

Done with her face, Kothophed moved on to her neck and shoulders. "But next to me, you are nothing. Your mightiest spells could barely touch me. Your merely human mind will never match mine."

You go ahead and think that, she thought through the pain. The demon had meant to crush her, but the power inside her was blossoming again, brighter and stronger than ever. It was worth the agony.

"If you ever get the idea of testing your strength against me," the demon said, "I will slit you open again. But this time, there will not be a young and beautiful Liliana underneath."

The lines traced by Kothophed's claw didn't bleed, but they glowed with pale, violet light as if the power they granted her was spilling out. Despite the agony, despite the demon's threats, she felt the shadow of death recede from her. She was young and powerful, and she would stay that way for ages.

Or until the demons came to collect the debt she owed.

But some part of Liliana knew that Kothophed was the one who should be afraid. She was more than she seemed, and the demon had underestimated her, like so many others before him. It was her destiny to overthrow the demons that claimed her. She knew it, as if the knowledge were a part of her flesh. As if Kothophed, unwitting, had woven that destiny into her being.

It was written on her skin.

Art by Karla Ortiz

4

Fire Logic

by Doug Beyer

Art by Chase Stone

CITY OF GHIRAPUR, PLANE OF KALADESH

Eleven-year-old Chandra Nalaar climbed through a shower of sparks. One or both of her parents were welding somewhere up the mine shaft from her and she grinned as the little flecks of fire bounced off her red hair. She climbed hand-over-hand up the web of scaffolding that clung to the walls of the tunnel. Today was finally the day. Her parents were inventors, her grandparents had been inventors, ancestors throughout Chandra’s family had been inventors. Today was the day she would finally embrace what had always been her chosen destiny: to become a deliverer of canisters.

Inventing had never been her strong point.

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate devices. Her world was full of wondrous inventions and marvels of clicking, gear-driven artificial life. It was just that somehow her patience seemed to end sometime before her projects did. And somehow, sometime during the construction phase, her fist almost invariably wound up colliding with the face of someone who deserved it.

It was a personal failing. She accepted it.

She had tried other callings. She set her mind to becoming a master artist, and had a roomful of snapped paintbrushes and ripped canvases to prove it. She had tried applying herself to schoolwork, until she was sent home with bruised knuckles and a headmaster’s note. She had never quite found her place in a world governed by clockwork and consuls. But today her true calling would begin.

Maybe Chandra would never be a metalsmith like her father or an ingenious artisan like her mother, but in a world that ran on elegant machines, she could supply the power source—the mystical Æther—to those who needed it. The supply of Æther was tightly controlled by the consuls, but her parents knew ways of procuring it, and they always helped those who needed fuel for their inventive passions.

Chandra clambered over the railing onto the platform where her father was at work on one of his own metallic creations. He pushed his thick-lensed goggles up on his head, leaving a raccoon mask of clean skin around his eyes. “Chandra! Haven't I told you to keep inside the safety railing? Why did I even build that thing?”

“It makes a much better ladder,” Chandra said. She hugged his waist. “So. Father dearest. I’m ready to go. Did you know that I’m ready to go? I’m informing you now. Ready.”

Her father rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to try to instill the virtue of patience in you. But I’m not the one to talk to. Your mother has it.”

Her mother clanked down a tight coil of stairs, wearing heavy gloves and an embroidered shawl around her hips. She carried a metal canister with all the ceremony of a birthday cake. “Her inaugural solo delivery! Oh, just look at her, Kiran! She’s going to burst. Here, daughter, come and help me seal this before the shipment explodes—or you do.”

Chandra’s mother set down the canister. The lid shimmered and hissed with a thin jet of effervescent vapor. In the same time it took for her father to gasp a word—“Careful!”—Chandra had given the canister a swift kick with her boot. The lid dented in, but it stopped hissing. Chandra grinned.

“I can tell already you’re going to be the best courier this city has ever seen,” said her mother with a wink.

Art by Tyler Jacobson

Chandra tipped her chin up like mock royalty. “Please prepare all my medals and trophies for when I return. I’ll try to remember you all when I am the world’s most important outlaw.”

“We prefer ‘vehicles of grassroots change,’” her father said. “But this is a serious responsibility, Chandra. The consuls have been stepping up patrols. People need what we can provide, but if we bring them trouble they will turn against our cause. Your mother and I are reaching out to find people we can trust.”

Chandra took the canister into her satchel and slung it on her back. “And today we’re trusting the old lady who lives by the Foundry.”

“Mrs. Pashiri, yes,” said her father.

“She was always fond of you,” said her mother. “Remember, she’ll know the signal. Those who know the signal know us for who we truly are.”

“I already know who I am. Chandra, the World’s Finest Courier.”

Her mother gave her an awkward hug, patting the canister on her back. “Your father and I believe in you. You know the route. You know the city. You’ll do great.”

“Just be sure no one follows you back here,” added her father, but Chandra was already climbing.

The sun dazzled her eyes. The city of Ghirapur moved like a living thing, the architecture adapting to the needs of the gearcrafters, thopter-builders, clockforgers, and other inventors and artisans who swarmed through it. Chandra struggled her way through the crowd, pulling on a school tunic with her teeth, the canister clanking against her back.

Art by Magali Villeneuve

The thoroughfare was jammed with too many people. She made a decision and took a perpendicular turn toward the canal. Two halves of a bridge glided to meet each other with a series of metallic clicks, merging to become a span over the canal, and Chandra hopped over the gap before it had completely come together. She diagonaled through the gates of the Akhara, a huge, round plaza ringed with tiered seats, skipping across the gears that rotated in the pavement and the raised dais in the center, dodging a clique of jabbering Ætherologists.

She took two more out-of-the-way turns and stopped at a baked-clay wall inlaid with vibrant mosaic tile portraits of great inventors. The surface was sheer and smooth, but she put her boot into a notch above one inventor’s nose and clambered over, dropping down onto a pathway painted with slashing stripes.

When she hit the ground, a group of soldiers, straight-backed and clean-cut, stood in her path: consuls’ forces. They wore standard-issue snapblades strapped to their forearms, and one had an Æther-charged dart-thrower.

“Where are you off to, young one?” one of them asked. “This is a restricted corridor.” He noted Chandra’s uniform, a replica of the ones some kids wore to the Builder’s Institute. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I’m in a hurry,” said Chandra. “And my examiner will eat me alive if I’m late again, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“As I’m sure you’re aware, miss, this is a restricted corridor,” said a second soldier. The snapblade clicked out from his forearm mount, its edge glittering. “The thoroughfare for pedestrians is back on the other side of the courtyard.”

“And the school bell already rang,” said the first soldier. “You sure you’re a student?”

“You wouldn’t be transporting illegal goods, would you?”

“Hand over the bag, please.”

Prickly heat crossed Chandra's brow. She couldn’t dodge past them, and she couldn’t exactly make a run for it.

“If I get another demerit, I’m done,” she said, glancing from the soldier’s gleaming blade up into his eyes. “Can’t you just let me go?”

One of them nodded to the other one. “Get out the Æther detector.”

Chandra shifted her weight away from the one who’d seized her, then jabbed sideways, elbowing another of the soldiers in the gut. She rebounded and slammed her fist into the collarbone of the first. That was probably a bad idea, she thought an instant after having done it. Such was fist logic.

The soldiers collapsed on her like a trap. Their hands took hers behind her back, so that she could only look down at the street. She kicked one in the shins and tried to head-butt one in the chest, but she couldn’t get free. A flood of heat and fury washed through her, and she clenched her teeth.

The soldiers halted. Another set of feet approached.

“Captain Baral,” one of the soldiers said.

Chandra wrestled to her feet and looked up at him. Captain Baral was a monolith of a man, stout and statuesque, with a face that seemed to taunt those around it for being of lesser handsomeness. The other soldiers stood silently.

“What’s the problem here?” he asked, looking at Chandra but not addressing her, his voice a gravelly whisper.

“Uncooperative, sir. A possible truant.”

“We told her this wasn’t the thoroughfare for pedestrians.”

Captain Baral smirked down at her. “You have to use small words with these street children,” he whispered. “Simple commands. ‘Sit.’ ‘Stay.’”

Chandra’s hands squeezed into fists. Rage spread through her fast, like a lit box of matches, igniting all the nerves in her body. Heat spread down her arms, into her hands, still held behind her back.

“I know you’re not a student,” said Baral. “Slide the bag off your shoulders and hand it to me.”

“No.”

“I don’t think you understand, child. You’re already in violation of the law in a half-dozen ways. Comply, or I will make you comply.” He put his hand on Chandra’s shoulder—gently, but with no tenderness in it. It was a clinical touch, somehow revolting in its cold detachment.

Chandra’s muscles tensed and she jerked away, making a sound through her teeth. She wanted to lash out, to yell, to throw her fury out at him.

And then something happened that had never happened to her before. Her hands glowed from within, illuminating the bones and blood vessels and the lines in her palms. Growing in intensity, the heat erupted through her skin until her hands were engulfed with fire like two torches. Chandra yelped in shock and stood there, dazzled, looking back and forth between her hands as they burned.

Art by Eric Deschamps

The soldiers backed away in a semicircle. Captain Baral stood still, surprise turning to genuine interest.

Chandra shook her hands. They didn’t go out. She thought about patting them against herself, but thought better of it. She looked to the men, too upset for words, gesturing with her burning hands. Strangely, her skin was not burning. The flames enveloped her hands, but there was no pain.

Baral put his hand out to her again. “Let me help you with that, child.”

“Get back!” Chandra instinctively waved away the aggressor, creating a blazing arc of fire in the air. The men backed away. The fire evaporated, and for a moment, everyone just blinked.

Chandra burst into a run. She slipped between two of the soldiers, both of whom made an inadequate half-motion to stop her, and she was gone. Behind her, she heard Baral’s gravel-throated whisper become a growl. “I want whirlers after her. Now.”

Chandra took a series of turns through the streets, leaving the consuls’ soldiers and a tangle of bewildering emotions behind her. She kept glancing down at her hands, but they appeared to be nothing but hands now. There was no sign of the self-immolating craziness from moments before. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen magic before; inventors regularly built creations that defied explanation, made even more wondrous by the power of Æther. But conjuring fire without the use of a device—that was new to her.

Art by Lius Lasahido

She ran onto a bridge back in the direction of home, but froze midway across. Rising almost silently into view were three ornate flying roterothopters, beating the air with their spinning rotors, each one with a large lens staring right at her.

She still had the canister. She wasn’t sure whether she was still eligible for the World’s Finest Courier Award at this point—she wondered if there was an award for Worst—and most of all she wanted badly to run home. But that would lead the whirlers there, directly to her family. The flying spies would report on all of her parents’ activities, and she was sure Captain Baral would come for them. She wasn’t sure what the punishment was for trafficking in Æther supplies. But she had heard stories of harsh and painful sentences carried out in the Akhara, in front of crowds of people.

The whirlers dipped and swung through the air toward her, staying just behind her as she fled back across the bridge. It was hard to escape on foot something that flew; the whirlers rose easily over obstacles she had to run around and she had to keep checking what was directly in front of her. She ducked into narrow alleys and dashed through shops, but the whirlers nimbly curved around to meet her when she came out the other side.

Art by Svetlin Velinov

She approached a familiar spire: the Consuls’ Foundry, the Æther-powered factory that mass-produced automatons for the consuls. She was about to circle around it and head deeper into the city when she heard her name.

“Chandra?” It was Mrs. Pashiri, Chandra's contact and a friend of the Nalaar family. She was emerging from the main doors of the Foundry, a set of keys in her hand.

“Mrs. Pashiri!” cried Chandra, out of breath.

“What’s wrong, dear? We weren’t supposed to meet here.”

“They’re after me,” Chandra said, pointing over her shoulder at the oncoming whirlers. Then she hesitated, remembering her parents’ warnings of whom to trust, and eyeing the ring of keys to the Consuls’ Foundry. On reflex, her fists tightened.

But Mrs. Pashiri made a loop with her forefinger and thumb, and held them near her forehead, as if she were pushing up a pair of goggles. It matched the signal Chandra’s parents had shown her. When Mrs. Pashiri made the gesture, she made it with reverence, almost a salute. “The Nalaars and I go way back, child,” she said.

Chandra vacillated. She could hear the whirlers’ approach. She wanted to trust her contact, this family friend who knew the right gesture, but the set of keys meant some kind of connection to the consuls. Options spun around her.

Mrs. Pashiri’s eyes narrowed as she looked past Chandra and saw the whirlers. She turned and unlocked the Foundry door again. “Get in here. Go out the back. I’ll distract them.”

It was the last place Chandra would have chosen to enter. As she debated, Mrs. Pashiri produced a delicate copper bird from her tunic. The bird came to life, fluttering its feather-etched wings, and launched toward the whirlers. The copper bird collided with one of the whirlers and exploded, sending a shower of pieces down to the street.

“Get inside,” said Mrs. Pashiri with a sharp nod, producing a little bat of silver filigree. “The machinists aren’t in yet. Go, dear. Get to safety.”

Chandra ran inside as Mrs. Pashiri began yelling insults at the whirlers.

Art by Johann Bodin

The interior of the Foundry was a still life of silent machinery. Half-assembled automata hung motionless, suspended by their torsos at machinists’ stations. Legs and grippers stood in racks, waiting for their turn to be riveted together and become another mass-produced servitor. The main overhead lamps were dark, and the only light was from a round glass skylight in the domed ceiling. A huge pylon, planted in the center of the space, soared up to the top of the dome. Automatic arms and gear-driven manipulators were folded against the pylon like a duck’s wings.

Chandra crept between assembly stations and filigreed gears, looking for the other exit. She heard another small explosion outside, and Mrs. Pashiri’s invectives faded into the distance. Chandra heaved a full-chested sigh of gratitude for the distraction.

She heard a ticking sound high above. Up on the ceiling, a series of elegant gears turned, and the skylight swiveled open. An unmistakable whisper of rotors heralded the last whirler, which descended through the skylight and found her with its eye.

A series of orange lamps flickered on across the foundry ceiling, cascading to life in a spiral pattern. The arms of the pylon stirred, splaying out its surprisingly long limbs and clawlike grippers. All around the foundry floor, artifact creatures unhitched themselves from their mountings and pivoted their heads toward her under the lurid light of the lamps.

A surge of heat flooded through her body. Her hands tingled and began to glow.

“No, thank you,” she said to her hands. “Not again. No, no, no.”

She pushed past one small artifact creature and elbowed another out of the way. She spied the exit, but a huge, six-legged machine stepped in the way of it. She turned back to the entrance, but that way looked even worse. Automata came out of nowhere, striding or shuffling for her.

A gear-driven humanoid construct reached out to her. Instead of hands it had metal shackles, and it reached for her wrists with its fetter-claws. She punched it, because that was fist logic. But instead of connecting, her fist threw a blast of fire, knocking back the construct and smashing it into scorched pieces on the ground. Another artifact creature crept at her and she fire-punched it too, flame erupting out of her at the point of impact. Her hands bloomed with fire again. These were beautiful machines, and she was in no way in control of her fire skill, but there was no time to stop and think. She raged forward with a progression of shouts and blows, scorching her intricate assailants one by one as they surrounded her.

Art by Daarken

She tried to cut her way to the rear exit but the horde of Foundry servitors came at her too fast, and the big, six-legged monstrosity still stood guard at the door. The whirler even had the audacity to swing low, sprout a bladed claw, and nip at her back.

She whipped around and yelled at it. Its rotor blades somehow caught fire and it tilted, collided with the pylon, and fell to the ground in a flaming heap.

Chandra remembered that she hadn’t actually made the delivery to Mrs. Pashiri. The canister of Æther was still on her back. As she turned back to the door guardian, a very bad idea occurred to her.

“Let’s see what you can do, hands,” she said. With her fingers still aflame, she grabbed the satchel off her back and flung the canister at the rear doors. The canister cracked against the multilegged door guardian and hit the foundry floor, knocking the lid loose. A spurt of Æther hissed from the container.

Chandra willed all of her fire and fury at the canister; she didn’t have time to worry about whether it was the right thing to do.

The dark of the underground shanty was cold comfort. When Chandra ran down the stairs, her mother doused a welding wand and her father raised his goggles. They could see the look on her face and the charred edges of her tunic.

“I…I have to tell you something,” said Chandra.

They embraced her. “Are you hurt? Are you burned? What happened?”

“I’m all right,” she said, trembling in their arms. “I made…I made fire.”

“You set a fire? On the delivery?”

“No. I made it,” said Chandra, breaking her parents’ embrace. “With my hands. I ran into some consuls’ soldiers and I got mad, and my hands caught fire.”

Her mother’s eyes went wide. She grabbed Chandra’s hands in hers, and turned them over and back, scanning them. “Were you hurt? Was anybody hurt?”

“Wait,” said her father. “You encountered consuls’ forces?”

“Nobody got hurt.” Chandra felt a heaviness, a sodden blanket of guilt, at the prospect that someone might have been hurt because of her. Her shoulders fell. A lump welled up in her throat. “I mean, there was—I caused—damage. At the Foundry.”

“The Consuls’ Foundry?”

“Mrs. Pashiri helped me get in. But I had to get through the door, and I may have destroyed it.”

“Destroyed the door?”

“Destroyed the Foundry.”

Her parents looked at each other. Their mouths opened and closed as if they were trying to say something, but no words came. Finally her father turned to her.

“Your hands caught fire, without a device? Spontaneously?”

Chandra’s eyes threatened tears, but she smeared them away with her wrist. “Yes.”

“And your skin did not burn?”

“My shirt did, some, here.”

“Can you…show me?”

“I don’t know if I can do it on command. It came out when I didn’t want it to. What’s wrong with me?”

“Chandra! Oh, Chandra.” Her mother wrapped her arms around her, squeezing her so that her face pressed against her mother’s neck.

“I know,” Chandra mumbled. She wanted to reach around her mother, but she kept her hands at her sides. She squeezed a tear into her mother’s embroidered shawl. “I’m…I’m a freak.”

“Honey, you’re not a freak,” her mother said. She broke the embrace and kept her hands on Chandra’s shoulders, looking at her face, her lips pressed together. “You’re a pyromancer.”

“If that’s what you call someone with matches for hands, then that’s me.”

“Listen to me,” her mother said. Her eyes were intense. “This is a gift. You have something special, something that’s not been seen in many years.”

Chandra heard this, but the words didn’t latch onto anything in her mind. She searched her mother’s face for some clue.

“I don’t understand.”

“Your fire,” her mother said. “It’s a form of magic. A special kind. But it’s something that intimidates them. If it’s something you can do without machines, without the need for Æther…you do it your own way, you see? And they hate that.”

“They need the people to need them,” said her father. “And if you don’t need them, you become a threat.”

Chandra balled her fists. How could two little hands cause so much trouble?

“Now Chandra, I have to ask you. Did anyone follow you here?”

“I think I blew up everything that could have followed me.”

“And the soldiers you met. Did they identify you?”

“They might have. I don’t know. But I lost them back by the arena. Father?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not ever going to be the World’s Finest Courier, am I?”

Her mother pressed her hand against her lips, holding back tears.

Her father took Chandra’s little hands in his large ones. “You are the World’s Finest, my Chandra. The finest any mother or father could ask for. No matter what happens.”

Chandra nodded, and her father hugged her, and her mother touched her hand. Somehow just being herself, just being their daughter, meant so much for them. She wondered what they saw, what being World’s Finest Chandra meant.

The darkness spoke her name.

Chandra.

It came at her as if it were muttered through molasses, unreal at first. Her consciousness seized on it and it dragged her up.

Chandra.

Her mother’s voice was soft, but the hand on her shoulder was firm. “Chandra. Let’s go, honey. It’s time to get up.”

Her room was dark, lit only by her parents’ handlights. Strangely the darkness woke her much sooner than morning’s light would have. Darkness didn’t fit the routine. Darkness meant something was wrong, even more wrong than yesterday.

Knapsacks. Tool belts. Armfuls of possessions.

“Wh—? Where are we going?”

“Grab a bag and follow your father.”

“What’s going on?”

Her mother pressed a knapsack into Chandra’s arms. They climbed the stairs to the heavy segmented door that formed the entrance to their home. Her father rolled the door closed and her mother welded it shut with a wand. They headed out into the night, their home in their hands, stealing from shadow to shadow. They didn’t speak, and Chandra didn’t ask questions as they climbed into the back of a waiting wagon and put a blanket over themselves.

Art by Dan Scott

The villages had no names. Dirt roads replaced the mobile mosaic courtyards of Ghirapur. Thatched roofs replaced rotating towers. Bent-over field laborers replaced stirring portraits of inventor-heroes. A simple shift dress and sandals replaced Chandra’s tunic and boots. Even her identity was replaced, as her parents told her to introduce herself and them with counterfeit names. They gave her a navy-blue scarf to wear over her red hair, a scarf she promptly lost.

They learned not to unpack. Chandra and her parents stayed only for a few days at a time, sometimes moving on to the next village after only a few hours’ sleep.

“How long will we be here?” Chandra asked as they arrived by cart in a new village.

“Not long,” said her father. “Our home is the road for the time being. I’d advise you to get used to it.”

“Are we having fun?” Chandra asked, half-jokingly.

“It’s an adventure, yes,” her father said in a flat voice.

Whenever her family drove over a rise, Chandra looked back at the city, comparing the distance to the last time she could see the skyline. Every time she looked, the vivid structures paled, the sharp spires and bright copper domes of the city swallowed up by the broad shapes of the mountain range around it. She would scan her father’s face at these times, searching for some kind of confirmation that this wasn’t hard on him, that it hadn’t crushed his spirit to be away from his little forge and his projects. She was adapting to this time on the road, even enjoying it, but she believed in her heart that this journey was all because of her, because of the trouble she had caused.

She spent her days roaming the villages and their surrounding woods, chasing peckingbirds from their coops and exploring the elevated paths of intertwined tree branches. The villagers had smiles worn into their faces, and they nodded to her and let her be. Her mother said that rules were only words used by people who wanted something, and these people wanted nothing from her, so she wallowed in freedom. She collected seeds and heavy fruit and other gifts from the woods, and left them at village doorsteps. She thought about her fire sometimes, but she did not seek it out, and it didn’t show itself. She thought of her power like one of her discarded devices back in Ghirapur—unfinished, unmastered, and abandoned.

On a bright day when she had thought nothing of fire and almost nothing of soldiers, she found a treasure in the trees. A huge, corrugated horn jutted from between two heavy branches. It curved in a sinuous shape, with striations that would hold paint nicely—a fine gift for someone in the village. She climbed up to the prize and wrested it free, letting the horn fall to the earth.

When she hopped down to the ground, a herd of furred beasts surprised her. Their horns matched the one she had found—she was clearly in their territory. Their snouty lips pulled back to reveal tusks meant for tearing flesh. They bellowed in her face.

She bellowed in theirs.

Her fire came readily, without thinking, as natural as the impulse to run. She carved handfuls of fire as she ran, cupping her hands as if she were grabbing clay out of the air, grazing the beasts’ faces with it and cutting off their paths. She threw flame without hesitation, without burning her sleeves, without trying. There was no negotiation with the fire this time. She needed it and it came to her.

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

The beasts dispersed with only singed fur or superficial burns, leaving Chandra alone with her heaving breaths and the glow in her cheeks. She found a trail and walked back to the village, clasping her hands together with a secret smile on her face. She didn’t tell her parents she had almost been gored to death by a herd of woodland creatures, but they pointed out that she had barely eaten anything at dinner. She couldn’t, not with the excitement making little explosions in her stomach.

That night she tossed and turned on her cot, unable to sleep. She traced a finger down the lines of one palm, feeling the contours of the bones in her hand, then switched hands and traced lines on the other. There was something in her that no one else shared, something that left her breathless, like painting still lifes or delivering canisters never could. She lay awake for hours, imagining a moth fluttering around inside her chest—a moth made of fire, burning but not consumed.

A candle in a filigree enclosure cast elaborate shadows around the walls of Captain Baral’s office. A messenger in uniform entered, touching her fist to her chest in salute. Captain Baral looked up from his desk.

“Report, soldier,” said the captain in his low rasp.

“We have word from one of our scouts, sir,” said the messenger.

“They’ve seen her?”

“All the three of them. The Nalaars have fled the city.”

“You have a location?”

“Only an approximate one. They’re hiding out in the outskirts, moving from village to village. Whirlers have caught sight of them once or twice.”

Captain Baral’s mouth twisted. “Return to me when you have specifics. You’re released.”

“But…sir? There’s something else.”

Captain Baral just raised his eyebrows at her.

She placed a missive marked with an official stamp on the desk. “Sir, the consuls recommend that we cease the search. Their missive claims we’re expending large amounts of Æther to track the Nalaars. Sir, we’ll be sure to apprehend them if they attempt to return to Ghirapur. The consuls just don’t consider them worth the resources to pursue them.”

“This is not about a couple of fugitives, soldier,” said the captain, not raising his voice above an even whisper. “It’s about the future. We need to show the people of this city that we’re prepared to move beyond the barbaric age of the past, to embrace progress. The girl is a remnant of a chaotic time. An obstacle. If we’re going to move forward, we’ll need our path to be clear. The consuls will understand that.”

“Yes, sir,” said the messenger. “We’ll find them.”

“Good. I want a skyship and a detachment of soldiers at the ready.”

The messenger hesitated. “Sir? Are we prepared for a fight, should we encounter them? The girl’s fire magic—it’s powerful.”

“We have nothing to fear from her, for we are members of an enlightened society of builders and creators.” Baral reached for the filigree cage on his desk that contained a small taper, and opened a little door in the cage. The shadow of his hand loomed across the walls. Baral didn’t touch the flame, but only held his hand near it. The flame dimmed and went out, leaving a sinuous line of smoke. “We know that fire never creates—it only destroys. Ultimately it will bring nothing but ruin to its wielder.”

“You wanted to see me?” Chandra asked, entering the modest dwelling in their latest host village.

“Come in,” said her father, patting a wooden bench. “Sit down.”

Chandra brushed dust off of her tunic instead of sitting. “Wait. Is this your ‘We have to have a serious talk about your behavior, young lady’ voice? Or is it ‘I want you to know I’ll always be there for you, darling daughter’ voice? I can’t tell.”

“Always the latter. Today, a bit of the former as well. Sit.”

Chandra sat. “Is this ‘We found out you set some stuff on fire, and that’s bad?’”

“Using your gift is never bad,” her father said. “It’s what’s special about you, and that will always be a good thing. It’s just that…not everyone sees it that way.”

“Is this about the beasts? Who told?”

“It’s just that some of the people in this village—they rely on the animals of the forest to survive. They’re helping us hide out, because they don’t get along with the consuls.”

“The consuls’ forces. They’re who’re after us.”

“That’s right. The people here are volunteering to keep us safe. So when we’re out here, we’re their guests. We have to play by their rules.”

“Mother says there are no rules out here.”

“I’m not sure you’re quite capturing her position. We owe our hosts a lot for their generosity. We must use our gifts in ways that don’t interfere with their lives.”

“It’s fire. What’s the point of saying it’s good if it’s against everybody’s rules?”

“You just have to be more careful. I have something for you, something that should help.” Her father handed her a small mechanism. It was a finely-etched metal box with vents on one side. It had a shoulder strap and a flexible cable that led into it.

Chandra turned it over in her hands. “What is it?”

“It’s called a vent pack. It’s based on an old invention from long ago. Your mother and I made this for you.”

“Should I be greeting this with skepticism? Because I am.”

“Try it on.”

Chandra stood and looped the strap over her shoulder. The vent pack settled in the small of her back. Her father touched the loose end of the cable to a spot of bare skin near her shoulder blade, and it adhered to her skin.

“What does it do? It’s heavy.” She twisted around to look at it. The metal of it felt cold through her shirt. And at the place where the cable met her skin, she felt a slight electrical charge.

Her father put his hand to his chin and regarded her. “Now some bad news. I’m afraid you can’t go back into the woods again. Ever.”

Chandra whirled on him. “What? Why?”

The pack hissed, venting a quantity of steam.

“Test successful,” her father said.

Chandra narrowed her eyes. “Skepticism turning to outright distrust, dear father.”

“I’m sorry. The vent pack converts excess energy into steam. The design is usually used for safely offloading surplus power in Æther collectors. In your case, your temper is an energy source. It feeds your gift. And this will help you control it.”

Chandra frowned. “So when I wear this, I won't be able to produce fire?”

“It should dampen your gift so that it will only manifest in a safer form. It won’t go off when you don’t want it to. And you’ll wear it all the time now.”

The vent pack hissed. She thought of the image of the fluttering fire moth, but now imagined it enclosed inside the vent pack, choking and dissipating into smoke. Maybe fire magic was something no one was supposed to enjoy. She felt suddenly childish.

Her father squeezed her arm. “This is for your own good, and for the safety of our village hosts.”

Chandra sighed and collapsed back down. “Father. Us being out here. Is it because of me? Because of what I did at the Foundry?”

“Chandra, listen to me.” Her father put his arms around her. “Your mother and I are very proud of the person you’re becoming. You’re the most important thing in the world to us. We want you to know that everything we do, we do to keep you safe, and to make the world a better place for our family. Nothing else matters.”

Her father broke the hug. She looked up at him, and his smile was warm and real. The metal corner of the vent pack poked into her back uncomfortably, but she held back and didn’t remark.

The day the soldiers surrounded the village, Chandra was exploring in the woods, her vent pack tapping against her back as she walked. She didn’t notice them approaching the homes, didn’t even hear the skyship descending. It was only when she heard the shouting that she ran back to the village and saw them.

They wore the same uniforms as those who had stopped her in the restricted corridor back in Ghirapur. Weapons were affixed to their forearms, and many of them carried lit lanterns, despite it being the middle of the day. One of them was tall and confident, and spoke to the others in a hoarse whisper. Captain Baral. Somehow he had found them.

Art by Daarken

The soldiers created a human fence around the village, crossing their arms and displaying their snapblades. One woman from the village shouted at them, and at Captain Baral’s order, the soldiers shoved her back.

Chandra’s vent pack gave a puff of steam. She stamped out of the woods at them. “Hey!” she shouted. “You looking for me? If you want me, here I am!”

The soldiers looked at each other. “It’s the Nalaar girl.”

“My name,” she said, standing up to chest-height, “is Chandra. Leave these people alone. They’ve done nothing wrong. Take me.”

“We will take you,” said Captain Baral. She had forgotten the way his low voice sounded like stones being ground to dust. “Because you and yours are a danger to yourselves and to the public.” He turned to the woman and the other villagers. “You may go.”

The villagers moved away, the adults ushering the children into their homes. Chandra scanned for her parents, but couldn't see them among the crowd.

“I'm not a danger,” she said. “Not anymore.” She swung her vent pack around for Baral to see. A constant trail of steam curled out of its vents.

“Your very existence is a danger,” Baral whispered. “Do you know how we found you, child? These people finally gave you up.”

“That’s a lie. My parents said they were keeping us safe.”

“Your parents’ crimes are many, but your crimes are far worse, pyromancer. You’re an instrument of chaos and death. How many people have you killed?”

“No one. I just broke some of your mass-produced toys.”

Baral’s mouth curled up at one edge, revealing his teeth. “That’s not what I heard. I heard you were responsible for dozens of deaths, in this very village.” He nodded to the other soldiers. “Do it.”

The soldiers used their lanterns to light the thatched roofs of the village buildings. They caught fire immediately, spewing thick, ugly smoke.

“No!” Impulsively, Chandra extended her arms to blast them with fire, but nothing emerged. Steam sizzled from her vent pack. Baral smiled, and something glimmered in his eyes.

“Chandra!” Her father came running from around the building. “Chandra, run! This way!” He hurled a small copper orb onto the ground at the soldiers’ feet. It exploded in a blast of light, spraying their faces with glimmering motes. They moaned and clapped their hands over their eyes.

Chandra ran into the village, her father close behind. She raced between the dwellings of the village, now consumed with fire and screams. Smoke rolled through the dirt pathways, cloaking the way back to the building where her family had been staying. She barreled ahead, trying to keep an eye on where her father was.

When she emerged from the smoke, she was on the opposite side of the village. Fire blazed tall, consuming entire buildings. People staggered out of the village, shrieking, rolling in the dirt to put themselves out. Baral’s soldiers stood by, doing nothing to help the victims. This would be blamed on her, she realized. She was the one who scared the woodland beasts with her fire, and so some villager must have contacted Captain Baral. And now all this fiery death would be on her hands, because she was the pyromancer. She had been tricked so easily, and Baral had all but stated it right to her face.

The soldiers caught sight of her. She turned to run the other way, but she slipped on something and fell. Her foot had caught on a slippery piece of fabric, trampled in the dirt. She took it in her hands. It was her mother's shawl, the one she always wore around her, with its characteristic embroidery. It was smoking and singed from fire. She realized she was in front of the dwelling where they were staying, and it was consumed in fire.

“Mother!” she yelled, suddenly unable to get up and run again. “No!”

The soldiers deployed the razor-sharp blades at their forearms. They parted to let Captain Baral approach her. He had a simple dagger in his hand, and towered over her. She couldn’t force herself to move.

“The arena will have an excellent show,” whispered Baral. “The consuls enjoy making an example of dissidents. And the crowds enjoy shows of force, when it doesn’t involve them.”

Her father appeared out of the village smoke. He shoved himself between them, wedging himself between Chandra and the soldiers. “Enough,” he said, coughing. “Take me. I’m the one you want. I yield.”

Baral approached her father, put one hand on his shoulder, and stabbed him through the gut with a dagger. Her father gasped and crumpled, falling to his knees, holding his stomach in his hands. He glanced at Chandra for a moment, and she saw his last emotion in his eyes—not fear, but disappointment that he couldn’t do better for her. He bent over, shuddering, and fell to the ground.

Art by Jason A. Engle

Chandra didn’t hear the sound she made at that moment. The world became enveloped in steam and smoke, and the uniforms of soldiers. She didn’t feel the clink of cuffs around her wrists, the dainty loops of copper filigree that held like heavy iron. She didn’t feel the vent pack blasting steam. She didn’t feel herself being walked to the skyship, stepping over the threshold and put in her seat, gripping her mother’s shawl. And she didn't see the plumes of smoke trailing away from the village as the skyship rose and turned its nose around toward Ghirapur. She only saw her father crumpling down into the mud, over and over again, and heard the disheartened sigh of his final breath leaking out of him.

The executioner was tall and broad; his face was hidden by a hood with a filigree mask. More relevant to Chandra's situation was that his forearm ended in a massive cutting blade. It may have been fitted over a hand, but to Chandra it looked grafted on, fused into the entire deadly costume of the executioner’s role. He walked in a circle around Chandra, tracing the perimeter of the central dais of the arena. It was the Akhara, the same courtyard Chandra had cut across when making her failed delivery only a few weeks ago. Now the stands were filled with people gathered to watch the grim spectacle.

She looked down at the delicate cuffs that held her wrists firmly in place. Her hands didn’t look like the weapons of a pyromancer, but like an ordinary child’s hands.

A squat announcer in a silk robe read her sentence in a booming voice. “For crimes against the public good, destruction of the honored Foundry of Ghirapur, and for the deaths of three people in the fire in the village of Bunarat, this citizen has been sentenced to meet the blade of justice.”

As he read, Chandra tried to muster her fire. But it didn’t come to her. She could feel something pressing down on her, dulling any fire she could muster. She still wore the vent pack on her back, now resting just above her mother’s shawl. The pack wasn’t hissing. Her rage was gone, along with her father. Chandra scanned the crowd for any sign of her mother—if she were alive, she would doubtless be here, trying to stop this, trying to save her daughter. But nothing stopped the announcer’s speech, which made it clear to Chandra. Her mother must be dead as well.

She had nothing left. Maybe it was only right that the executioner take her life.

“Today we all learn a difficult lesson about the limits of compassion and the importance of vigilance,” the announcer continued. “Today we learn that, for some, no amount of direction, no amount of moral guidance, can be enough. Some are born with destruction built into them, and for the good of us all, these must be eliminated.”

Maybe she wasn’t meant to go on. Maybe she was never meant to be the best at anything. Maybe she was just a freak after all, a monster with a “gift” that could only cause those around her pain. Maybe no one could trust her, could love her for who she was. Maybe she should just lower her head and accept her fate.

Something in the crowd caught her eye. It was Mrs. Pashiri, her contact from the foundry. Mrs. Pashiri nodded to her from the crowd, her mouth a thin, taut line, her eyes glazed with defiant tears. Slowly, Mrs. Pashiri raised her hand. Her fingers closed into a circle by her forehead—the Nalaar signal, like a pantomime of her father’s welding goggles, performed like a salute.

Chandra’s fists squeezed. The vent pack hissed, then whistled like a tea kettle. She kept her eyes held on Mrs. Pashiri, that gesture, that respect for who she was. She was a Nalaar. She was Chandra Nalaar.

“This citizen’s continued existence endangers us all,” said the announcer. “So for the sake of us all, she meets the demands of justice. Bladebearer, please step forward.”

As the executioner took three ritualized steps toward Chandra, the blade slid out from his arm, doubling its deadly length. Chandra’s whole body tensed. The vent pack’s whistling turned to a sputter as something boiled within her.

Art by Lius Lasahido

The executioner leaned his masked face close to Chandra’s. “I know you’re trying, pyromancer,” he said in a gravelly whisper.

Chandra tore her eyes away from Mrs. Pashiri and looked directly into his mask, her teeth gritted. She knew the voice instantly. “Baral.”

She could see Baral’s eyes through the filigree of the mask, and his glare was utterly cold. She could feel the weight of his presence on her, the pressure of his antimagic.

“You and I aren’t the only mages this world has seen,” he whispered. “But I’ll be the last you’ll ever know.” He tilted back from her slowly, letting the blade swing out and up for all the crowd to see.

Chandra focused on Mrs. Pashiri in the crowd. The old lady never lowered her hand. Chandra’s wrists strained at the restraints, but she couldn’t move. This was her final moment.

Baral raised the blade high. Chandra heard the announcer give the order: “Swing.”

Every one of her muscles tensed. She reached inside, grasping for something, anything—and she found the fiery moth, its bright wings fluttering. It was a tiny but rebellious source of light, undeterred, undoused. It was her, she realized—a manifestation of her gift, but also a manifestation of herself. She was her fire, and her fire was her. She felt a tiny part of what it meant to be a pyromancer, what it meant to be alive, what it meant to be Chandra.

In a slow instant, the blade arced down through the air toward her neck. Chandra felt the prickling sensation wash over her like a wave of coals. Her vision flickered at the edges, blurring out Baral and the announcer and everything around her. The arena and the crowd warped in a molten haze. She felt the sputtering steam from her vent pack turn to white-hot liquid, barely aware that the pack had melted into slag, and was dripping down her leg and burning through the stone dais.

Art by Eric Deschamps

Her hands caught fire, flash-melting the restraints. Her arms caught fire. Her shoulders and torso caught fire. She turned her face away, but the flame spread up her face. Her hair became a blaze of incandescence. Her eyes roasted, becoming red-hot orbs in their sockets.

She uttered a scream of fury, and the scream became an explosion. A cascade of fire blasted out from her, enveloping the dais, enveloping her captors, enveloping the entire world. Everything she could perceive was bathed in fire.

She held her flaming arms over her flaming head, and squeezed her flaming eyes shut tight. Her ears rang, deafened and roaring at once. A moment or an eternity passed. One moment she thought she heard the screams of Baral, and the next she had the sensation of being blown out like a candle, or of rushing through a tornado and coming out the other side.

When she opened her eyes, the smoke from her blast still cloaked the world around her. Her clothes fumed, and her vent pack was gone. When she heard voices of people approaching her, she readied more fire, preparing to throw it at her captors once again. The fire came to her readily, like a trusted ally.

The smoke cleared enough for her to see the people who approached her. They didn’t look like consuls’ enforcers, or like anyone she had ever known: tall and noble, robed like monks, with ash streaked on their faces like ornate masks. Behind them rose a hilltop of roughly sculpted rock, with stairs leading up to a monumental archway leading into the mountain. Craggy stone architecture bloomed from the mountain, lit by brazierless trails of fire, and the air smelled of hot gases and baking earth.

The arena was nowhere to be found. The entire city, her entire world had abandoned her—or she had abandoned it.

Chandra sputtered in terror. The monks reached out their hands to her in a calming gesture, and one of them said something in a soothing tone.

So she summoned up her will and blasted all of them with fire. Fire logic.

Somehow, though, the raging funnel of flame did not harm them. One of the monks raised his hand and her fire subsided, attenuating and becoming a warm glowing ring that encircled her and them together. The monk nodded to her.

“Greetings, pyromancer,” said the monk. “You are welcome here.”

Art by Eric Deschamps

5

Home

by Kimberly J. Kreines & Adam Lee

Nissa Revane found herself woven into an unending stream of living light.

It was a place she never wanted to leave, for it embraced and cared for her. It wound around her and supported her limbs, giving her the feeling of weightlessness.

After a timeless moment, though, the stream began to disentangle itself. How she hated to see it go.

As it floated past her, she noticed that it was actually made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny filaments. It was a glittering river of jewels. It glided so close that she could reach out and touch it. She let her fingertips run through it, and as the tiny filaments passed, she felt each individual essence, all of them unique. Under everything, she felt a great sense of contentment. She wanted to stay like this, connected to the stream, forever.

“Ow!”

Something hit Nissa from behind, in the back of her head. She reached to rub it.

“Ah!”

Again. This time in her back. Hard.

She turned.

The stream was caught up on her, caught up because there was a knot—a large, black knot that was preventing the flow, holding the stream back.

It slammed once, twice, and again into Nissa’s arm. It hurt.

She tried to push it away, tried to shift its course, but it refused to be dissuaded.

It made strange sounds, sounds like writhing and gnashing, awful sounds too close to her ear. It was darkening and growing. Soon it would be larger than her.

Nissa tried to run, tried to swim away.

She reached for the light, but all that was left was the darkness.

It consumed her.

It suffocated her.

It would end her.

Art by Chase Stone

Nissa awoke with a start, screaming and gasping for breath.

It took her three blinks of her eyes to realize: “Home, I’m home.”

Her breathing slowed as she stared up at the familiar wooden roof, tracing the pattern of vines that lashed it together. She knew the pattern well, for this was not the first time she had awakened in her bed after a vision of darkness.

As she slipped further into this reality, her other senses came back to her as well. She could smell the aroma of her mother’s stew. It must have been warming over the fire. Had she missed dinner again?

She could feel the evening’s dampness on the air, a dampness brought on by the rain, which she could hear pattering on the roof. The sound of the rain was gentle and calming, but there was something turbulent under it: two voices, hushed and tense. She pushed herself up to sitting and pressed her long elf ear against the wall.

“Was she not just screaming again?” This was Numa, Chief of the Joraga. “Screaming of an evil darkness?”

He was talking about her vision! That meant he had heard. Nissa cursed herself for screaming so loudly; she knew the trouble it would cause.

“What do we do when it comes looking for her, for us?” Numa asked.

“Nothing is looking for anyone.” This was her mother, Meroe. “It was never after anything other than random destruction.”

“Random? Your people angered Zendikar and they paid the price. There is a reason that you are the last of the animists.”

Nissa shivered, the dampness on her skin turning cold.

“Zendikar is not vengeful,” her mother argued.

“If you believe that, you are blind. You and your daughter are putting all of us at risk. I cannot allow it.”

Nissa pulled her blanket up around her. This was not the first time that she had heard her mother and Numa argue about her visions, but she had never heard Numa speak in such a hard tone.

“You understand that I must put the tribe first,” he went on. “I must protect my people.”

“Are you…are you sending us away?” Her mother’s tone was disbelief.

“I have no choice, Meroe. I cannot risk Zendikar’s retribution. I’m sorry. Truly, I am.” Numa’s words were followed by the sound of his retreating footsteps. Her mother’s hurried footfalls followed.

Nissa clutched the corner of her blanket, rubbing the soft spot over and over again. Her mind reeled. Numa was going to kick them out of the Joraga camp. Where would they go? What would they do? More, how could he do that to her mother after all Meroe had been through? Nissa’s heart ached at the thought of her mother suffering.

She wanted to hate Numa, but she couldn’t blame him for protecting his people. He was right. She was a danger, the last of the animists and the only one remaining who still had visions.

Her mother told her the visions were a gift. She said they were Zendikar’s way of talking to Nissa. But her mother did not understand. Meroe had never seen the darkness, she had never heard the writhing and gnashing, she had never felt the suffocating pressure, so she could not know.

For many moons now, Nissa had believed that Zendikar was hunting her, and now Numa’s words confirmed her fears. Her visions were not a gift, they were a warning. Zendikar was speaking to her and its message was clear. It would have its retribution. It would finish what it had started with the animists. The dark knot was coming for Nissa, and that meant that anyone near her was in horrible danger.

Nissa slipped out of the house before her mother returned.

The darkness was complete, the stars hidden by the clouds that were still sprinkling the land with rain. She packed light—her staff-sword, bow, arrows, bedroll, and a few provisions—she’d hunt on the way. The only other thing she brought with her were the bits of nature magic that she knew, which somehow seemed less impressive now as she was slinking through the darkness alone.

When her feet wanted to turn around, she reminded herself of why she was leaving; she would not lead the horror to those she loved. When it came for her, it would find only her.

Nissa didn’t stop or even slow until she saw the first hint of deep, blue light through the trees. She had kept such a pace that she would be ahead of any Joraga trackers by at least half a day, and that’s only if they could find her trail. But they wouldn’t. She had been using her nature magic to cover it, putting every last blade of grass back in its place. She glanced over her shoulder to reassure herself. Her spell had worked flawlessly; there was no sign that she had travelled here. Not even the most skilled tracker would be able to find her.

Art by Wesley Burt

As the reality of that thought set in, Nissa’s mouth went dry. She took a deep breath, forcing down the feeling of dread, and turned forward to press on.

“What the…?” Nissa squinted at the ground. Was it a trick of the light?

She shielded her eyes from the dim pre-dawn. It was still there. A shimmering stream extended out in front of her. Nissa gasped. It was just like the stream of light from her vision.

“No.” Her stomach clenched. It was happening already—the stream would lead the dark knot right to her.

She took a step back.

It moved with her.

“Stay away from me!” Nissa kicked at the stream and took off at a run in the other direction.

But there it was in front of her again.

She somersaulted and changed course.

After two steps it was pointing to her once more.

She turned a third time and leapt over a log.

This time it was there before her first foot landed.

When the sole of her boot touched the ground, the glowing stream swirled up to meet her. Before she could turn again, before she could run, it wrapped itself around her like a cocoon.

It happened so fast that Nissa’s struggles were pointless. She went to reach for her sword, but her sword hand was bundled up in a sparkling tendril, floating weightless like her other limbs.

She tried to twist her way out, she tried to panic, but neither worked. The embrace was so comforting, so calming that she couldn’t help but soften into it. It was telling her it would not hurt her, that it was not evil. But it was; she knew it was…wasn’t it?

Her confusion turned to awe as the stream enveloped her completely.

In that moment, deep in the heart of the Joraga forest, Nissa Revane connected with Zendikar.

She understood then. The glowing stream of light and life was the land’s soul. And it was the most beautiful, most wonderful thing Nissa had ever touched.

It eased her into a vision, guiding her gently into its thoughts, its memories, and its hopes.

Art by Chris Rahn

The stream swirled around her, each of its jewels sparkling, but Nissa understood that they were more than just jewels; each sparkle was a living being. All the beasts, plants, and races of Zendikar were a part of the endless stream.

What was more, the stream was not just a stream, it was the land. It was the contours and the depressions. It was every blade of grass, every pebble of dirt, every grain of sand. It was everything, and it was all connected.

The glowing creatures frolicked around her, coming into focus as they passed by her eyes. She watched the baloth roar, the great jurworrel tree wave in the wind, the long, slender nectar snake slither across the ground, and the barutis bird soar through the sky. And then she saw an elf, an elf that looked very familiar.

It was a perfect, crystalline version of her.

The glowing Nissa walked along the streaming land. Each step she took sent shimmers through Zendikar’s soul. She followed the stream through the forest, picking up speed as she went, running faster, faster, leaping, and then flying. She crossed a desert, a bog, a mountain range, and then a hundred other places that flew by too quickly for Nissa to recognize.

Finally the stream slowed and the glowing Nissa came to rest. She stood on a rocky ledge, looking up at a mountain peak.

Inside the mountain, Nissa could hear the horrid writhing and buzzing, and she could sense the dark knot. She recoiled, fear rising up inside of her. Had this all been a trick?

But the glowing Nissa did not seem to be scared. She held her ground. She raised her hands, her palms facing the darkness. Her lips moved, but Nissa could not hear what she uttered.

And then, suddenly, a bright light blasted through the whole vision, consuming everything—the mountain, the knot, and the glowing Nissa.

When Nissa woke, the cocoon was gone. She was on the ground, and she was looking up at what seemed to be a pair eyes.

“Nissa?”

And a mouth.

“Nissa?” The mouth formed her name again.

It took another moment before Nissa recognized the voice. “Mazik?” Nissa struggled to sit up.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m all right. I…wait.” Nissa blinked up at her friend. “What are you doing here? Were you following me?” She jumped to her feet, her ears flicking around for signs of approach.

“Don’t worry, no one else is here.”

“Do they know you came?”

“Only your mom. I had to tell her when I saw you go.”

“Mazik!”

“Don’t be mad. She was glad you went out into the forest. She thinks your visions will be clearer out here.”

“She said that?”

Mazik nodded. “And she said she wants you to follow them. My dad and I do too. We believe in the animist ways. We believe your visions are important. You just had another one, didn’t you?”

“You were watching me?” Nissa flushed. “The light…did you, did you see it?”

“I did…” Mazik hurried on before Nissa could scold him. “But don’t worry, I’m not scared. I think it’s amazing.” Mazik’s eyes were so hopeful that Nissa relaxed a little. “What did this one tell you?”

Nissa looked into his familiar face, a face she had thought she might never see again, and she decided to trust her friend. “Oh, Mazik, everything I thought was wrong. Zendikar isn’t after me. It’s not after any of us. It’s not evil or vengeful. It’s magnificent. But it’s in pain. Something horrid is hurting it.” She shivered at the thought of the dark knot. “And I think, I think…oh never mind, I don’t know what I think.”

“You think Zendikar wants your help to save it.”

“How did you know that?”

Mazik pointed down to Nissa’s feet. The glowing stream of light was back. It was swirling around her legs playfully like an eager pet.

Nissa’s heart soared at seeing it again. “Hello, Zendikar,” she said.

The stream trilled with excitement and shot up, whirling around her and Mazik like a funnel cloud. It blew their hair into the air and filled them with a feeling of enchantment. Before their hair even had a chance to settle, the light was tugging on their wrists, asking for them to follow.

Art by Howard Lyon

Nissa looked to Mazik.

The stream tugged again.

“Okay, okay, we’re coming,” Mazik laughed.

Together, they followed the stream of glowing light deeper into the forest.

They agreed without having to discuss it that they would travel together. The stream of light, it seemed, wouldn’t have it any other way. Mazik could see it as long as Nissa was close by. If he wandered off to hunt or forage he reported that he lost sight of it, but as soon as he returned to her side, the path glowed for him again.

Like an excited child, it showed them all the secrets and beauty of the forest: hidden alcoves, trees that twisted so high into the sky that their tops were lost to the clouds, vines that danced, and babbling brooks that sang sweet songs. It was like they were in a new land, a land of wonder.

Nissa felt that she, too, was new. The bond she had made with the soul of Zendikar grew stronger with each step, and so did her magic. When she cast spells, even simple ones, they burst forth with flourish. The jaddi nuts she enchanted to light their way at night arranged themselves like the stars, forming the shapes of animals to guide them. When they encountered an angry tree stalker it only took a slight flick of her wrist to change its course and free them of worry. She moved the leaves of the trees to shelter them from rain, and she drew up the sweet nectar of the flowers to lift their spirits when they grew weary.

But even amid all the wonder, Nissa couldn’t entirely shake the foreboding feeling that crept into the corners of her stomach. With every step they took they were getting closer to the darkness. And when they arrived at the mountain she would have to face the knot, for that’s what the glowing Nissa had done. But how?

After two days in the enchanted sanctuary, Nissa and Mazik reached the edge of the forest. The world beyond fell away, opening into a canyon land of red rocks, dry trees, and wind-scoured mesas. As they stepped out, it felt to Nissa like she was leaving home all over again. But this was where the stream of light was going; this was where it was leading her.

The elves were not used to the bright heat of the sun. Their delicate skin was so accustomed to the protection of the forest’s canopy that it turned hot and red within hours. They drank all but a few drops of the water they were carrying before the first nightfall, and their feet ached from walking on the hardened ground.

On the second day Nissa began to worry. She didn’t want to believe that the soul of Zendikar would lead them out here to their deaths, but if they didn’t get fresh water soon, their fates would be sealed. “Where are you taking us?” she asked the stream. “We’re thirsty.”

It only shimmered in response, leading them on through the canyon.

By midday on the fourth day, Nissa was so hot and thirsty that, when they crested a hill and saw a vast marshland below, she let out a whoop of pure joy.

The elves raced down the hill to the marshland, kneeling at the edge of a brackish bog. Nissa used her magic to draw out streams of pure, cool water. They drank until their bellies were full, and then they snacked on the wild mushrooms that grew along the bank, and drank some more.

Nissa was utterly content until Mazik spoke.

“Now we have to cross that?” he asked, pointing ahead. It was a rhetorical question; he could see the shimmering stream just as well as she, and it very clearly went straight through the bog.

“At least there’s water…” Nissa offered. She tried to sound cheerful, but her voice was tinged with fatigue. “Wasn’t there another way around?” she whispered to the glowing stream.

It twittered and shimmered and tugged her along as though it was completely unaware of their current predicament. And perhaps it was unaware, Nissa thought. It was the soul of the land after all; all of the land, not just part of it. The bog was as much a part of Zendikar as the forest was. With that thought came a sense of compassion, and Nissa’s eyes opened anew.

As they picked their way deeper into the marshland, Nissa formed a connection with it. She saw the beauty in the moss-laden trees, felt the magic in the mists that rose up from the brackish waters, and swayed to the song of the swarms of lion flies that circled them. She never would have believed a bog had so much to offer.

Art by Tianhua X

“Uh, I think we should get out of here.” Mazik’s voice came from behind.

Channeling her new-found sense of love for the bog, Nissa ran her fingertips across the swardy surface of a nearby snap fern. “It’s okay Mazik, if you just open yourself to it you’ll see….”

“No, Nissa, we have to go…NOW!”

Nissa spun at Mazik’s shout. As she did, she caught a biting scent in the air: oil, unguents, death.

Vampires.

Mazik grabbed her arm and pulled her along, high-stepping through the muck.

“Where are they?” Nissa glanced about frantically as they ran.

“I don’t know.” Mazik sniffed. “Everywhere!”

A hiss from behind made them both turn.

Five vampiric horrors loped after them. The biggest one, a shirtless male streaked in blood, led the charge.

“We have to get out of the bog! Help us!” Nissa cried as they ran.

The soul of Zendikar responded to her need. The stream of light cut a new path through the marsh, one Nissa knew would lead them to safety.

She ran like an arrow along the glowing stream, faster than she had ever run. The connection she had made to the bog allowed her to move through it like she did the forest; she leapt from log to log and swung on low-hanging vines to cross a dark ravine.

She felt the vampires’ presence recede even before she broke through a thick line of trees and out into a clearing.

Panting, she clutched her knees. The stream of light gathered around her feet, which were now on solid, non-bog ground again. “That was…close,” she said between great gulps of air. “Did you see the teeth on that big one, Mazik?”

When he didn’t respond, Nissa looked up. “Mazik?”

Nissa’s racing heart plummeted. “Mazik!” Her call fell flat against the thick bog.

She turned to the glowing stream. “Where is he?”

Suddenly a sharp, strained cry sounded from the trees.

“No!” Nissa sprinted back into the bog. She did it without thinking, but a few steps in, her thoughts caught up with her feet; she was most certainly running toward her death. She shook off the cold fingers that tried to pull her back. She wouldn’t go back, not without her friend.

There were ten of them now. The reeking, shrieking vampires were circling one of the tallest trees. Nissa looked up into the branches. Mazik was clinging precariously to a bent perch, his arm bloodied.

With a spiting hiss, two of the nearest vampires sprang up toward him, securing handholds on the lowest branches.

“Get away from him!”

Art by Igor Kieryluk

Nissa hadn’t realized she was going to call out. The sound of her voice startled the vampires too. They turned as one, and seeing her, their hungry eyes locked onto their new prey.

Nissa only had the space of a few heartbeats to react. Her instincts took over. She reached for the land, for Zendikar, channeling its power. She hoped to pull up a few roots, enough to make a barricade, enough to give her time to run. But rather than roots, she pulled up what felt like an entire tree. Though as it emerged, she realized it wasn’t a tree at all, it was the land itself.

It rose up in a wave, growing out of the muck and taking on form. It was as tall as a baloth. It charged at the vampires, teeth gnashing and legs flailing.

It took the first two out merely by crashing into them. It wasn’t until Nissa felt the pull at her fingertips that she realized the elemental was under her control. She directed it at a cluster of three vampires. It swiped with its massive paw, knocking them to the ground in a blast of green light.

There were five left. Nissa turned her elemental on them.

One tried to run, the big one, the leader.

“Oh no you don’t.” Nissa summoned the bog’s dangling, dancing vines. They snapped to attention, making themselves into spears, and they pierced the vampire straight through his heart.

“Nissa? Nissa!” Mazik clambered down from the tree and ran to her with his arms open.

Nissa stepped into his embrace. They stayed that way for a long time, their hearts pounding against each other.

“You saved my life,” Mazik finally said, pulling away enough to look into her eyes. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Nissa tried to laugh, but it came out more like a hiccup.

“So yeah, you really…” Mazik pointed at the fallen vampires. “And then you…” He gestured to the land.

“Yeah, what was that?” Nissa mused.

“That,” Mazik said, “is how you’re going to save Zendikar.”

They broke free of the swamp just before dawn. Nissa missed it more than she thought she would. She had grown attached to the muck and the saggy trees and the moss that covered every surface. Now they were in the foothills of Akoum, yet another new part of the land to learn.

Mazik encouraged Nissa to practice using her new powers. She agreed; it felt like the right thing to do. To hone her skills, she called together the detritus that littered the ground and lifted it to form a hovering canopy that shaded them, sending crevice miners and trench giants alike scattering away. She moved enormous boulders that blocked their path, and she made stairways and bridges out of the land so they could cross the deep canyons.

Art by David Gaillet

Mazik was convinced Nissa's magic was the key to destroying the darkness. He repeated back to her what she had told him of her most recent vision, citing the way that the glowing Nissa had lifted her hand and muttered what he thought must have been a spell.

Nissa wanted to believe him; she wanted to trust that she would be ready when they got to the mountain, that she would be strong enough, powerful enough to face the dark knot. She wanted to believe that she could defeat it, because she had to; Zendikar was counting on her, she could feel it in her soul.

It happened deep in the forested mountains of Akoum just moments after Nissa had calmed a charging hurda’s violent tantrum. She came up short.

“What is it?” Mazik asked.

Nissa didn’t answer. She scanned the trees in front of her, searching, but it was gone. The glowing stream was gone.

“Nissa?” Mazik prompted.

“I don’t know—I lost it—do you see it?”

Mazik turned his eyes to the ground, searching along with her. “It was here just a moment ago.”

Nissa knelt, feeling around for her connection, for the glowing soul, but there was no trace of it.

“Do you think we should backtrack?” Mazik asked. “Maybe we took a wrong turn.”

“I don’t think so, I…” Nissa’s words were cut short when the land shifted beneath her. The shift was subtle at first, but very quickly the unstable feeling of vertigo grew along with a strange sense of incoherence.

Nissa realized it in the same moment Mazik said it. “The Roil! It’s happening!” He ran for the cover of a rocky outcropping that was protected by a large tree and Nissa followed.

Art by Sam Burley

Nissa had heard stories of the Roil, the force of Zendikar that consumed everything in its path. The stories didn’t seem to be exaggerations. Rocks were raining down around them and the land was shuddering and undulating like the violent waves of an ocean.

The elves lost their balance and tumbled to the ground. Nissa reached for Mazik’s hand and together they scrambled under the overhang. The world around them turned on its head. Trees twisted and bent, jutting out from the ground at odd angles. Boulders popped high into the air and slammed together, cracking and splitting and then hovering like long, jagged teeth. An immense force lurched and snaked through the land itself like a blind madman; roots, rocks, and soil warped and folded to its will.

“Nissa, you have to do something!” Mazik was looking to her like she held the secret, like she knew what to do. But she didn’t. Her connection to Zendikar was gone. She was just as scared as he.

A rock smashed down mere paces in front of them and splinters flew at their faces. Mazik shielded his eyes. “Please,” he begged her. “Make it stop. Just try.”

Another rock rained down and then another. If she didn’t do something, they would be buried alive.

“Okay, yes, okay, I will try.” Nissa said the words more for herself than for Mazik. She placed her palms on the land. “Come,” she whispered. “I need you. Please.” She sent her own soul out, reaching for her connection, but there was nothing there. She dove deeper, extending her reach as far as she could. “Zendikar.”

And then all at once it came to her, an overwhelming flood. It was cold and oppressive; it was fear. Nissa had found her connection, she had found the land, and the land was terrified.

She could see it then; the Roil wasn’t an alien force; the Roil was Zendikar’s reaction to the dark knot. It was the land rearing like a spooked horse. So horrified was it of the darkness that it had lost itself to fear.

Art by Izzy

“Hush,” Nissa said. “Be at ease.”

But the land did not respond. If anything it bucked more.

“It’s not working!” Mazik cried.

Boulders crashed into the overhang above their heads, sending chunks of rock raining down on them. It wouldn’t hold for much longer.

“Nissa, what do we do?” Mazik’s voice was filled with panic.

Nissa closed her eyes. She did the only thing she could think to do: she began to hum. It was an animist song, the tune that her mother had hummed to her so many times. She dwelled on each note, infusing it with peace, comfort, and reassurance.

When the song ended, everything became still and silent.

Nissa opened her eyes. The land had ceased moving mid-wave. Trees were caught tilting out like elbows. Rocks were paralyzed half-way up their trajectory, and trails of dirt hung like stars in the night sky. It was as though time had stopped.

And there before her was the glowing stream.

“You’re back,” Nissa whispered. She offered her hand.

Tentatively, it rose up to meet her touch.

Uniting with Zendikar was everything.

Nissa had not realized how empty she felt without it until it returned to her. Now she was whole again; now she was home.

“I know you’re hurting,” she said. “But I promise I will help.”

The stream warmed in thanks.

“I need you to show me, though. I need you to show me where to go.”

The stream swirled around her fingers and then, with a quick flick, it dove down into the land.

Nissa worried that she had scared it off again, but a heartbeat later, the land began to pop and tremble. It called to it all of the free bits and pieces: leaves, grass, twigs, dirt, and stone. They came from everywhere, rushing toward one singular point as though they couldn’t get there fast enough.

First a head emerged with a long snout cut out of rock, then a neck followed by two stocky legs.

Nissa took a step back as a fully formed elemental stepped out of the earth.

“Nissa?”

Nissa blinked at the sound of Mazik’s voice, and with her blink, time resumed. But the chaos did not. The land calmed, the trees and the rocks fell back into place, and the wind picked up again.

The elemental stood before them. Its nose was glowing; Nissa recognized the glow as the light of the stream. Zendikar had come to her. Even here, even in this place so close to the darkness, even though it was scared—it had come to guide her.

“Thank you,” she said.

Nissa and Mazik followed the elemental just as they had followed the glowing stream. It led them up into the mountains and through the high, jagged peaks known as the Teeth of Akoum. Nissa had a sense that she had been here before. Certain rock formations seemed familiar and images from her visions flashed before her. They were getting close.

For days they traversed the mountainscape, taking breaks only for the necessities—to hunt and forage, to eat, mostly slugs, to refill their water supply, and rarely, to sleep. They couldn’t sleep much, and when they did they both had nightmares, nightmares of painful, writhing darkness.

Nissa worried about Mazik. His steps had slowed and his breathing grew heavier each day. She kept a close eye on him, for it seemed that the knot was hurting him more than it was hurting her.

Early one evening just as the sun was dipping under the highest peaks and the sling-tail nighthawks were beginning to rustle in their perches, the elemental stopped. It pawed the ground anxiously and reared its head, nodding at a tall column of rock.

“What is it?” Nissa asked, inching closer to the corner.

The elemental backed away. Nissa peered around the rock and her breath caught.

Huge, diamond-shaped stones floated in the air, hovering in unsettling stillness, each one spaced with an unnatural perfection and held there by what must have been an immense magical force. The sun reflected off the strange markings on their flat sides. They formed a ring around the highest peak of Akoum.

“We’re here,” Nissa said. She knew the peak well from her vision; that was where the dark knot was.

“Nissa.” Mazik’s voice was weak. She turned to see him stagger and fall.

“Mazik!” She rushed to him.

“Something’s wrong. I don’t know…” He clasped a hand his to his face as blood dribbled from his nose.

“It’s the dark knot.” Nissa pulled Mazik back around the corner. “We have to get you away from it.”

“No.” Mazik held up a quivering hand. “No, Nissa. You’re finally here. You have to go. You have to help.”

Nissa looked from Mazik to the elemental that was bucking and trembling. It was clear to her that neither could go any further. Whatever she did next, she would have to do alone. Her heart broke at the thought of leaving them.

“It’s okay, Nissa.” Mazik spoke in a tone that said he understood. “I want you to go. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” He rested his hand on the elemental’s thick, rocky leg and its trembling lessened.

“You’ll be okay,” Nissa agreed.

She helped Mazik up onto the elemental’s back, and she laid her hands on both of her friends. “Be safe,” she said, sending a calming stream of magic to them.

“Be strong, Nissa Revane,” Mazik whispered.

The elemental’s nose glowed as it padded away down the path. To stop herself from following them, Nissa turned back to the mountain, and she took her first step toward the darkness.

After the first step, she did not stop. She could not allow herself to pause or she feared she would not work up the courage to continue. She approached the ring of glowing stones and then she hurried under them, skirting their shadows. Once inside she slowed and stared up at the towering peak, the highest peak of Akoum.

This was it; she had arrived. The dark knot was here waiting for her.

It buzzed and writhed, making noises that scratched at the inside of her ears. She hated it then. She hated it for what it had done to Zendikar, for what it had done to the animists, and for what it had done to Mazik.

She circled the peak, climbing slightly higher with each step. She was feeling out the knot, planning her attack. Though there wasn’t much to plan. She had decided days ago that when the time came she would do just as the glowing Nissa had done. And so she did.

She found the spot, the same ledge that the glowing Nissa had stood on, and she planted her feet on the ground.

“I call on you now, Zendikar,” she said. “I am here to rid you of this darkness.” With that she reached down deep into the land. She knew that the stream would not be easy to find here, that it would not dwell so close to the knot it feared, but she also knew that it would come to her call.

It seemed to understand the importance of the moment, for she did not have to reach quite as deep as she thought to find it. Once she connected with Zendikar she drew upon its power. She pulled it into her, as much power as she could hold…and then more. She didn’t stop until her chest felt as though it would burst.

Then she lifted her hands, oppressively heavy with power, and sent forth a blast so great that the entire sky filled with the energy she had summoned. She screamed with the effort and stumbled back, straining to hold her hands up as the power flowed from her.

When the last of the magic had drained from her fingertips she sucked in a long breath and looked to the mountain. She expected to see a ruined peak, a crack from which darkness was oozing out; she expected to face her enemy, and for that she was prepared. But she need not be. The mountain was unblemished and the darkness was still writhing inside; it was as though her spell had done nothing.

“How?”

The dark knot contorted and gnarled in a way that sounded like evil laughter. The scratching cackle pulsed forth in a shockwave of madness that rushed Nissa, piercing her eyes and burning through her psyche. It showed her everything. She saw what was inside the mountain, she saw what it wanted, she saw what it had done.

She saw the monster.

Nissa screamed again, this time in terror, and she crumpled to her knees as wave upon wave of monstrous madness washed over her.

Just when she thought she would not survive another wave, something inside her cracked, like an egg breaking open, and a warm, thick, all-consuming force spilled out of the crack. It surged through her with an unmatched intensity, greater than the madness of the monster—capable of ripping her apart from the inside, capable of ripping apart the very fabric of Zendikar.

It was over then. This was the end for her. She had not destroyed the darkness; it had destroyed her.

Nissa let go.

What happened next was impossible for Nissa to understand. Excruciating pain shot through her, and Nissa was sent hurtling out into a void. She saw light and energy, swirls and holes. There was no up or down. There was no land or sky. It was black and then it was bright. She was tumbling, but there was no way to stop; there was nothing to hold on to. If this was her end, she wanted it just to end. She didn’t want to suffer anymore. She squeezed her eyes shut and curled into a ball, clutching her legs to her chest.

And then suddenly there was solid ground beneath her. It had come out of nowhere. Had she landed back on the mountain again?

When her heart settled slightly, she risked cracking her eye open, the right one.

The left opened only a moment after the right; there was too much for just one eye alone to see. The colors were vivid and unprecedented, in shades she had never seen before. The shapes of the plants and trees were also foreign, their leaves and the texture of their bark unidentifiable. And then there was the smell. It was at once sweeter and heavier than any scent she had ever known.

She was not on the mountain. She was in a forest, but it wasn’t a forest on Zendikar. Something told her she was very, very far away from Zendikar.

There was a flutter of relief that accompanied the realization; she was not in the same place as the monster. She had escaped the dark, knotted madness, escaped the pain. But the relief was followed closely by a sense of failure. She had broken her promise to Zendikar. She had faced the darkness, and she had lost.

“No!” Nissa slammed her fist into the ground in rage. When she did, the land reacted. Something inside of it jumped up to meet her and it pulled her in.

She fell into this new land. Lorwyn, it called itself. It was nothing like Zendikar. The only thing the two worlds shared was that they were both worlds, beyond that they were as different as two snowflakes, each with its own markings, its own ways, its own inhabitants. Where Zendikar embraced her, this land was standoffish. Where Zendikar was playful, this land was somber.

But they were both in pain.

How? Nissa wondered. How could there be so much pain, so much darkness, so much evil?

The evil in this land was not far under the surface. It was bubbling up, ready to release; a thousand shadowy spiders had been growing and now were chewing through their silken egg casings.

“The Great Aurora brings the night…as Death reveals its door…shadows fast obscure the light…unleashing Shadowmoor.”

The spider-things hissed.

Nissa shuddered. “Get back.” She swatted at the shadows.

“We will not go back. It is our time. We are coming. Soon everything will be ours.”

A wave of crawling darkness washed over Nissa.

Nissa woke to a circle of scowling faces and realized that she had been screaming, again. The faces were elf-like, but the beings had horns growing out of their heads and hooves instead of feet. Their swords and spears were leveled at her.

Art by Lius Lasahido

The group muttered as they looked at Nissa with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.

“No horns?”

“No hooves.”

“Look at her eyes!”

“Her eyes are glowing!”

“Stay back.” This voice was firm and strong and it came from a tall, poised female, clearly the leader. She brandished her sword, its tip coming inches from stabbing Nissa’s nose.

Nissa started and let out a small squeak.

“Enough with the noises,” the strange elf said. “Do you want to ruin our hunt?”

“Y-your hunt?” Nissa asked, confused.

“The blight hunt. Those horrid creatures will flee if you keep up your screaming like a banshee.”

“Yes!” Nissa jumped up. “You know of the blight too! I saw them. They’re coming. They said they were going to take over everything.”

“Ha! Did they now? They think they could stand against us?”

“You won’t let them?”

“You’re not from around here, are you, little elfling? This is our land, my land. And we will not let those horrors poison its beauty. Do you hunt?”

“I…I do, but I don’t know….”

“Eyeblights on the right!” one of the elves shouted from behind the leader.

“Now’s your chance, you strange, beautiful, green-eyed creature,” the leader said to Nissa. “Take up your blade and prove yourself.” With that, she charged into the thicket of trees on the right.

“My blade.” Nissa unsheathed her sword. “Yes.” Something felt so right about this, about the charge and the hunt. This was what was supposed to happen when a land was threatened.

She ran into the trees after the hooved elves of Lorwyn.

A male elf, not much older than Nissa, caught her eye as she entered. He held up his hand and motioned for her to move to the fringe of the trees. She did so without making a sound.

Together, they crept along the perimeter of the thicket. Nissa could hear a grunting, yapping sound like wild pigs or goblins.

“They’re close.” The male elf smirked. “I’m Galed by the way.”

“Nissa,” Nissa said.

“Nice to meet you. It looks like you’ve caught Dwynen’s eye. She doesn’t make a habit of inviting strange elves along on her prized hunt. But I can see why she let you tag along. You’re one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen.” Galed leaned in as he spoke and breathed in Nissa’s scent.

Nissa shuddered at his closeness. There was something intoxicating about the moment—these elves, this place, the hunt for evil. In a way, she felt like she was finally where she belonged.

“There it is!” Galed said. A heartbeat later he sprang out from the trees and jabbed with his spear.

Nissa pounced behind him, landing next to him just in time to see him slash the throat of a small creature that yelped in fear.

“There’s more! Get them!” Galed pointed.

Nissa dove on top of another small creature her blade raised, ready to strike. But something stopped her.

This wasn’t one of the evil spider-creatures from the cocoon in her vision. This was a squat creature with greenish-gray skin that was all lumpy and warty. Two eyes bulged out of its head in a toad-like masquerade, and its mouth flapped open and shut as it tried to make a sound.

Nissa was frozen, her hunter’s instinct halted by the look in its eyes.

“D-d-don’t kill,” the little creature stammered. “P-p-please.”

There was no way that Nissa could slaughter this innocent creature. She jumped off of it and it scampered away. “Galed!” she shouted. “What are you doing? These aren’t the evil!”

Galed didn’t hear a word; he was lost in the heat of bloodletting, dispatching one creature after another.

“Galed! Stop!” Nissa ran for Galed as he cornered yet another one.

Art by Igor Kieryluk

The small creature squealed for mercy.

“Don’t hurt it!” Nissa cried.

But she was too late, his spear sunk into the creature’s chest.

“No!” Nissa sank to her knees next to the small body. The creature blinked up at her, its eyes wet and lost.

Nissa’s hands fluttered around it, unsure of where to move or what to do. There was nothing to do. She rested her palm on its forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said. And in that moment she connected with the strange creature. She felt its place in the glowing stream of life that was Lorwyn’s soul. She felt its hopes and dreams, its fear; she felt its pain and suffering. And then she felt it die.

“Why?” Nissa jumped to her feet and spun around. Galed was standing so close she could feel his hot breath on her cheeks. He must have been watching her. Good. “Why did you kill it?”

“Because the boggarts are a blight.”

“They’re not a blight. They’re living things. They’re part of this land. You’re an elf! An elf!”

“And you’re insane.” Galed looked down at his chest.

Nissa followed his eyes and realized that her blade was poking his garment right over his heart. She saw it but she didn’t lower it. “There is so much evil,” she said. “So much darkness already. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it all. It’s horrible. It’s awful.” Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of her precious Zendikar. “Yet you insist on adding more.”

“Get away from him!” Dwynen’s voice cut through the woods. She stormed up to Nissa. “What are you doing?”

Art by Steven Belledin

“What are you doing?” Nissa spat back. She turned from Galed to Dwynen. “You cannot kill these innocent creatures. I will not let you.”

Dwynen drew back her bow. “How dare you?” she said. “How dare you come to my forest and tell me what I can do?” She nodded and Galed lunged at Nissa.

Nissa dodged and spun away from the attack. She held up her blade to block a second strike, but it never came.

Both Galed and Dwynen stood shocked, staring ahead, their mouths hanging open.

Nissa turned slowly, dreading what she would see. Her worst fears were realized.

A towering wall of twisted, squirming night was approaching them. As it moved across the land it left dark destruction in its wake.

“Shadowmoor,” the darkness hissed.

“No!” Dwynen gasped. “Not my Lorwyn. Not my beautiful Lorwyn!” She summoned her magic and blasted a spell at the approaching darkness. Galed followed suit.

Nissa stepped up next to them, reaching down for her own magic.

“What are you doing?” Dwynen glared at Nissa.

“I’m helping you!”

“You’re not helping. This is all your fault! Witch!” In one motion, Dwynen threw Nissa to the ground and landed with her knee on Nissa’s chest.

“I didn’t do this,” Nissa choked out. “Let me help, please. Maybe together we can….”

Dwynen pressed a nocked arrow to Nissa’s throat. “You destroyed my world!” She moved to release the bowstring, but just as she did, the wall of darkness touched her.

Dwynen was paralyzed, caught in the Great Aurora of Shadowmoor. She changed before Nissa’s eyes, darkening and hardening.

Before the dark wall could touch her too, Nissa slid out from under the tip of Dwynen’s arrow, sprang to her feet, and ran.

“Where are you going, pretty little elf?” the dark voice hissed in her mind.

Nissa didn’t look back. She just kept running—she kept running and thinking of Zendikar.

“Oh, you want to go home, do you? But what will you do when you get there? You’re powerless against the evil that haunts Zendikar.”

Nissa’s steps slowed, but for just a heartbeat. She forced herself to press on; she was only barely avoiding the wall of shadow.

Art by Sam Burley

“Zendikar, Zendikar, Zendikar,” she chanted.

She felt the spark inside her, the one she had felt at Akoum before she had been hurtled into the void. It had ignited again and it was tearing her apart from the inside.

“You will regret it if you go,” the voice said. “You will fail. Again.”

No. She would find a way. She just had to get there. Nissa charged through the pain toward the place where she could feel the world opening to let her out.

“Stay here, little spark walker, stay and join me. I will make you more powerful. I will give you what you need to save your precious Zendikar.”

The void had opened. It was right in front of her, and Nissa stood at the threshold. She could see the swirling eternities on the other side. All she had to do was step through. But she hesitated.

“Stay, Nissa, stay with me forever.”

That was the thing though, wasn’t it? If she stayed, she would never leave. She would be powerful, yes, but she would lose herself, and she would lose her connection to her land. If she stayed, she would lose Zendikar.

In Nissa’s moment of clarity, a thread extended before her. It was like the glowing stream of light she had come to know so well, but much brighter and thicker. It ascended to meet her.

This was her path. It was the very thing that she had been searching for all her life. She reached out with a trembling hand and took hold of it. It pulled her with great force through the tear in the fabric of Lorwyn and out into the void.

As she tumbled into the vast space, she saw her path unravel through the eternities. It would lead her many places, but for now it would lead her home.

Art by Wesley Burt