Oath of the Gatewatch

Collected Stories

Compiled by Kimberly J. Kreines

Contents

Copyright

1. The Rise of Kozilek

2. Retaliation of Ob Nixilis

3. Reclamation

4. The Blight We Were Born For

5. Up In Flames

6. Beneath the Surface

7. Oath of the Gatewatch

8. Brink of Extinction

9. Zendikar’s Last Stand

10. Zendikar Resurgent

OATH OF THE GATEWATCH: COLLECTED STORIES

© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Cover art by Elsa Monnier

First Printing: March 2016

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1

The Rise of Kozilek

By Kelly Digges

The merfolk Planeswalker Kiora has gone to great lengths to defend her world against the Eldrazi. She stole the divine weapon of a god on the plane of Theros and brought it back to Zendikar. She remembered the old stories of the merfolk gods, and how the trickster god Cosi—a garbled memory of the reality-bending Eldrazi titan Kozilek—made a fool out of Ula, the sea-god, who was really the titan Ulamog. With Ulamog rampaging across Zendikar, Kiora was inspired by the old stories of Cosi's tricks to face off against what she thinks of as Ula, god of the sea.

The other Planeswalkers who are fighting the Eldrazi think they are trapping Ulamog, but Kiora has no intention of stopping there. She has her god-weapon. She has mighty allies of the deep. Her course now is clear.

Her battle with a god is finally at hand.

Kiora descended smoothly from the dizzying heights of Sea Gate, standing at the tip of a massive suckered tentacle, gripping the bident that was going to kill a god.

Planeswalkers were supposed to have vision.

She wasn't angry. Not really. She hadn't gotten this far by relying on others to see things her way, and she wasn't entirely sure why she'd bothered trying to convince them. But the thought of facing Ula was so grand, so intoxicating. And she had a weapon that could do the job. Surely someone would want to share in that triumph!

Kiora's gills opened as the giant octopus's tentacle plunged beneath the surface. There, waiting for her in the shallow waters that lapped against Sea Gate, was her own army, the one the dry-walkers had dismissed: five of Cosi's own tricksters and a legion of sea monsters.

"What's the plan?" asked one of the tricksters, in the peculiar language used by merfolk underwater. Shen, his name was.

"We split up," said Kiora. "We don't have as much time as we thought."

"Something wrong?" asked another of the tricksters, Yesha.

"Not at all," said Kiora. "Ula is—Ulamog is coming here."

"Says who?" asked Shen.

Tricksters were notoriously skeptical, keenly aware of how easy it is to make a claim—and how difficult to prove one false.

"A ruin diver named Jori En," said Kiora.

"I've heard of her," said Shen. "She's trustworthy."

A careful choice of words. Jori might be reliable, but she was no devotee of Cosi.

"It gets better," said Kiora. "You remember those other worlds I told you about? The ones I can travel to?"

The tricksters murmured affirmatives. She wasn't sure how much of it they believed, but it was plain enough that the bident came from nowhere on Zendikar.

"Well, according to the scholars up in the tower, we may not even need to kill Ulamog. If we hurt him enough, he might leave Zendikar behind and trouble some other world."

The tricksters didn't rejoice—she hadn't expected them to—though probably not for the same reasons as the softhearted elf up in the tower.

"If he can leave, he can return," said Yesha.

"If he leaves," said Kiora, gripping her stolen god-weapon, "I can follow."

"So what's the plan?" asked Shen again. He was the least patient of the five, the most likely to question her—a truly devoted worshiper of Cosi. Kiora liked Shen.

"Their plan is to lure the titan into some kind of hedron trap," said Kiora, "and bind him to this world, as he was before. No doubt it's an appealing notion for people who can pack up and leave when it's finished."

The tricksters made sounds of disgust.

"Our plan is to kill him if we can, and drive him off if we can't," said Kiora. "Fortunately for us, their plan and ours are compatible...to a point. We're going to hit Ulamog hard with everything we've got, and if that means we take advantage of their diversion, all the better. Tola, Inash, Runari—you stay here. Help the other world-walkers with their hedron trap, and pitch in on killing Ulamog if they come to their senses. If not...do what you have to do."

Art by Jason Chan

The three tricksters nodded and swam away. Kiora sent a command out to half of her sea monsters, a gentle reminder that these merfolk issued commands in her name. She put the odds of that working at about even—tidal chances, merfolk called that, sometimes in and sometimes out. But the tricksters should be safe, at least.

Kiora turned and swam away from Sea Gate, out into the open ocean. Shen and Yesha fell in with her, along with the other half of her armada. They fought their way through the cloud of swimming Eldrazi spawn that surrounded Ula, and then they were free, with nothing but water ahead of them.

"What about us?" asked Shen. "Where are we going?"

"Out and down," said Kiora. Out was a merfolk compass-point, always away from the nearest coast—though Kiora sometimes used it to describe that direction only she and those like her could move, out from the world and away from the shores of reality.

"You going to tell us why?" asked Shen.

"It's important enough to turn Kiora away from Ulamog," said Yesha. "That's good enough for me."

That shut Shen up, at least, but Kiora could see him out of the corner of her eye, jaw set, eyes dark. The tricksters didn't follow Kiora because she was a Planeswalker, or even because she was powerful. They followed her because they wanted to be a part of the story she was telling, a story about stealing a weapon from one god and using it to fell another.

They swam through that sullen silence for a long time, past the continental shelf and out over open waters. Behind and beneath them were Kiora's sea monsters, restlessly snapping at one another as they swam. They were bored, ready for action. Kiora didn't blame them.

"This is far enough," said Kiora, and the trio came to a stop.

Shen and Yesha waited.

"For thousands of years, we and our ancestors unknowingly worshiped the Eldrazi titans," said Kiora. "I'm sure there are some who still do."

Shen grumbled at that. Many merfolk assumed that if any of their people still held the Eldrazi in reverence, the tricksters must surely be among them—when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

"We who have kept the faith of Cosi know that there's nothing special about gods. There's no such thing as divinity. There's only power. And anything with enough power, especially something ancient, can lay claim to the mantle of godhood. I stole this weapon from a being who called herself a god, and it is a weapon worthy of one. But let's remember that the Eldrazi aren't the only things our people have worshiped as divine."

She looked down, into the abyss that stretched out beneath them. Shen's eyes grew wide.

"After all," said Kiora, "what else do you call a being who may have been alive to see the Eldrazi imprisoned to begin with? What else do you call the one whose every move commands the tides themselves?"

Now Yesha understood, too. Kiora saw it in her eyes.

Kiora held the bident out in front of her and channeled every bit of power she had in her. The bident began to glow—blue, then white, until the glare of the thing was blinding. Kiora spread out through the currents, the tendrils of her awareness reaching out like squirming tentacles. She lost herself, a speck floating in a vast and hungry sea, and Zendikar's oceans opened themselves to her. Nearby—close to the speck, much too close—was Ula, a great dark blot spreading an ink-stain of dead, senseless corruption.

She reached farther, then. Across the sea. The shapes of the continents revealed themselves in negative space, the ridges and valleys of the seafloor reaching up between them. Somewhere out there, swimming across the wide, dark sea, were her sister and a few dozen other merfolk, but Kiora couldn't pick them out from the whales and the krill and the flotsam. Past them, then, or past where she hoped they were by now, to the far-off shores of Murasa.

There. She found him, coiled tightly in the depths, dormant. Slumbering. Kiora had never dared to call upon him—had not been sure, if she was being honest, whether she even could. But she was not calling him now, not really, or at least not alone. The bident was calling. He would answer.

In the distant darkness, an eye opened.

Kiora came back to herself, opened her own eyes. She had no idea how long it had been, but she felt the way she would after hours of swimming. The bident's glow faded, but didn't fully dissipate, pulsing gently in a slow, steady rhythm.

"What is this?" asked Shen. "Why call to him, if Ulamog is so close? What good does power do us if it's an ocean away?"

"None at all," said Kiora. "That's why I didn't call him."

The water grew very cold, and very still.

"I summoned him."

Yesha balked.

"What makes you think you can even—"

Then he was there with them, a vast and churning darkness that blotted out what little sun filtered down to them.

Art by Kekai Kotaki

Lorthos!

She summoned, and he came! Kiora would have laughed, if it had been a little less terrifying.

The great bulk moved, rotated, a whole landscape of barnacles and scars and heaving, rubbery flesh flashing by beside them. It was dizzying, like flying. At length, an enormous beak rolled into view, a maw that could swallow a whale without chewing.

Wait! sent Kiora, holding out the bident once more. She channeled the thought through the bident, but it wasn't a command, not like when she demanded that her lesser sea beasts obey her. It was a plea. There are interlopers in your sea, great one. Will you fight them with me?

The beak opened and closed and opened again, but the great octopus did not swallow her whole.

I am not weak, thought Kiora. I summoned you here, and I bear a weapon that can hurt them. Together, you and I can teach these creatures a lesson in humility.

These were constructs of civilization, weapon and lesson and humility, but surely something within Lorthos knew that he was power, and power must defend itself.

The beak closed, and the vast intricacy of Lorthos's enormous body flew past them once more. At last, his eye rolled into view, shining blue, the eye and the bident pulsing together in time. How small three little merfolk must seem to him! Insignificant motes, dancing in darkness, daring to speak his name.

Then he turned and sank beneath them, exposing the top of his mantle. Suction drew Kiora and her tricksters in, and they swam with it. Her lesser sea creatures backed away to the edges of her awareness, trying to stay out of grasp of those enormous tentacles.

"Grab hold of something!" said Kiora. "This isn't going to be gentle."

Shen and Yesha found resting places among the ridges of Lorthos's skin. Scars deep enough to hide in, barnacles bigger than the biggest clams she'd ever seen—the scale of him was almost incomprehensible. And Ula is bigger still.

Kiora took her place at the top of Lorthos's mantle, her bident still pulsing in rhythm with his eye. Shen took a place near her, no doubt ready to take up the bident should she fall. She caught his eye and winked.

Not yet.

Then Lorthos rose, and Kiora rose with him.

She didn't need to tell him where to go. He knew, could sense the intrusion of the Eldrazi titan in his seas. He couldn't know of other worlds, likely had no idea what the Eldrazi were. But he knew power—and he knew a challenge.

Lorthos lunged forward in bursts, expanding and contracting like a massive heart. Kiora gritted her teeth. Traveling by octopus was always like this, but this was worse—he was so damned big. Still, she couldn't argue with the results, as each surge pushed them hundreds of yards forward.

Slowly but inexorably, Lorthos and Ula converged on Sea Gate.

Kiora's sea monsters spread out around them, acting as a screen against the waves of spawn. Her mind was pulled in dozens of directions at once, trying to maintain control of this vast armada as its members were injured, their dull instincts shifting from fight to flight.

The water grew shallower as they approached, and soon each of Lorthos's pushes lifted his passengers out of the water, blinking in the sun and air, only to send the ocean crashing back down around them. Then it was too shallow even for that, and Lorthos pulled himself along with his tentacles. His mantle broke the surface and stayed there, raising great waves in the little harbor and giving Kiora her first clear view of the enemy.

The other Planeswalkers' plan was working. Ula stood within a ring of hedrons, which glowed brightly with binding, blinding light. His arms and tentacles thrashed, batting at his assailants and his prison, but he seemed to be trapped.

Art by Craig J Spearing

Look at him! This was the face of a god? This dull, bone-white blankness? He looked so stupid, flailing around like a cuttlefish caught in a trap. Why had anyone ever thought this pathetic creature was worthy of reverence? Just because he was big? Ha!

He really was big, though.

Here, so close and drawing closer, the enormity of her foe began to sink in. He towered above the water, nearly as tall as the lighthouse even though he was partially submerged. Set against an Eldrazi titan, even Lorthos looked small. In a head-to-head fight, the great octopus of Murasa probably wouldn't stand a chance. Good thing he had her to help him.

Then something went—wrong. The power coursing through the network of hedrons went red, then black. It flared on one of the hedrons, a dark flash. Then, one by one, the hedrons began to fall from the sky.

Kiora didn't know what had happened, or how. Maybe the hedrons had been rotten, or defective, or whatever it was hedrons got when you left them lying around for a few too many centuries. Or maybe he had simply broken free. Whatever the cause, the effect was clear: Ula was free of his prison.

Forward! she urged Lorthos, though he hardly needed her to tell him. She grinned and risked standing, steadying herself with the bident. At last, she would punish Ula for what he had done to her people and her world—for the destruction since his release, for the millennia of deception before it, for being the festering rot at the heart of this plane for so very long.

"Ula!" she cried. "Turn and face me, you wretch!"

Shen looked at her like she'd gone mad. It was gratifying.

Ula did not turn toward her, but away, to lumber along the sea wall, toward the shore. Coward!

The water began to churn, turning choppy and violent. At first she thought it might be her own fury, channeled unconsciously through the bident. But no—no, this was something else. Something else was happening and she didn't know what it was and then she saw it and oh gods and monsters—

Art by Lius Lasahido

The alien shape that rose above the landscape was horribly familiar. A crown of jet-black blades rested upon the nothing that ought to be the thing's head—impossibly flat, impossibly black, like holes in space. A mantle of shining carapace spread out beneath them. His enormous hands reached out, grasping, two swords of obsidian reaching back from his forearms.

Cosi.

With one lurch he was in the water, sending a wave surging across the bay. Another and he stood before Sea Gate. He raised one enormous arm and swung, and the gleaming white stone of the sea wall seemed to stretch beneath it, to melt, to flow out and around in spiraling squares the color of oil on water. Kiora watched helplessly as the Halimar Sea, its water level held high above the ocean by Sea Gate itself, began to pour through the gap, cascading around Cosi's arm in impossible geometries.

The two titans moved toward one another, and for a mad moment Kiora thought they might battle for the privilege of devouring Zendikar. They brushed past each other, slow and smooth as icebergs. The moment passed.

Cosi turned toward her.

The world seemed to bend around him, as though he were its center. Those perfect black shards above his head seemed to draw in light itself. She couldn't understand the shape of them, or whether they were even solid. Where they overlapped, they seemed to merge together. They weren't objects, or even shapes—they were holes in space, and they captivated her.

Who had taught her that gods could be defied? Whose example had led her on this collision course with a god—with two? Cosi stories had shown her that Ula could be tricked, beaten, brought low. But there was one thing she'd forgotten in her rush to confront Ula, one thing that every Cosi story had in common.

Cosi always won. Not the mortals who followed his example. Not the dolphins who chattered his praises. Cosi always won. Kiora had tricked Thassa, had thought to humble Ula. But Cosi had tricked her.

A movement out of the corner of her eye brought her back to her senses. Shen stood next to her, expression slack, eyes black. Around his head floated a crown of obsidian shards, like Cosi's.

He lunged for her.

Kiora stumbled backward across Lorthos's craggy skin. Shen kept coming, reaching for her—mindless, lost. The bident lodged against one of the great octopus's scars, and she was stuck. She only had a moment to decide.

The bident was a god's weapon, yes. It had vast power, some of which, no doubt, she had yet to even glimpse. But it was, in the end, a weapon, and could serve as any other weapon would.

She raised the bident, and its twin points buried themselves in Shen's chest.

Shen's eyes cleared, and the shards above his head vanished. He looked at her, hands clutching numbly at the bident. He tried to say something, or ask something, but all that came out was a kind of low, whistling moan. Blood seeped out around the points of the bident.

She kicked him away. The bident slipped out of him easily, bright-red blood splashing against Lorthos's skin. Shen fell away from her, slid, tumbled into the water, and was gone.

Cosi towered over her now, his writhing tendrils and Lorthos's tentacles entangling furiously. Kiora pumped power into the bloodstained bident, bolstering Lorthos for the fight, but the octopus was hopelessly outmatched. Cosi's arms rotated impossibly, bent strangely at that hideous double elbow. The obsidian blades that extended from his forearms scooped low into the sea and rose above her, seawater cascading from them. These, truly, were the weapons of a god. Compared to them the bident was a trinket.

One massive blade, then the other, slammed down into Lorthos's body. The second one missed Kiora by less than its width. Blue blood, almost black, welled up around them.

Kiora stared up at Cosi, but Cosi didn't stare back. He couldn't—no head, no face, just a vast and alien presence towering above her. He'd attacked Lorthos because the octopus was the only foe anywhere close to his size. Kiora and her precious bident were insignificant, beneath his notice.

She understood, finally, where she had gone wrong. Cosi hadn't tricked her. Cosi had no understanding of the little story she'd been telling—the one that cast the tricksters as loyal dolphins and the other Planeswalkers as fools and herself, laughably, as Cosi.

Thassa had hated her. Cosi couldn't even see her.

With a wet and horrible sound, Cosi pulled his arms apart. Lorthos's body shuddered and split, fountains of dark blue blood splattering into the water. The bident's light went out. Kiora lost her footing and fell, as Cosi let the two uneven halves of the ocean's mightiest champion slide from his blades.

As she fell, the bident slipped from her numb fingers. She watched, helpless, as her greatest trophy tumbled away.

She'd killed Shen. Probably the other tricksters, too, and dozens of her noble ocean behemoths. Lorthos, bringer of the tides, perhaps the oldest and greatest creature of Zendikar's seas. She'd killed all of them. They'd believed in her, believed in her little toy, believed in her stories. And they'd died for it. At least her sister had left her, thank the gods. Thank whomever.

Cosi blotted out the sun. No—not Cosi. Kozilek, massive and impossible, a twisted mockery of the idea of gods.

She hit the water, and blackness claimed her.

Art by Zack Stella

2

Retaliation of Ob Nixilis

By Kimberly J. Kreines & Nik Davidson

The plan had worked. Together, Nissa, Jace, Gideon, and the army of Zendikari had succeeded in constructing an enormous hedron prison capable of holding an Eldrazi titan. And as of just a moment ago, Nissa had heaved the last heron into place, trapping Ulamog, the monster that had ravaged her world.

Standing on the floating rock next to Gideon, Nissa was at eye level with Ulamog's massive, bony faceplate. The impossibility of what they had just done threatened to send her off balance, but the cheers from the Zendikari below buoyed her up.

Art by Richard Wright

For too long, her world had been at Ulamog's disposal, careening down an inescapable path toward destruction—Bala Ged, Sejiri. But now, finally and almost inconceivably, it was the other way around. At last, it was Zendikar's turn to do the destroying. And Zendikar would show no mercy.

"All right, let's start to pull back! Hold your lines!" Gideon called orders to the Zendikari below as he made his way down a rope ladder toward Sea Gate. "Keep the perimeter secure!"

It was good that Gideon was in charge; the people would be safe with him at the helm, which meant Nissa was free to focus on the titan. A surge of anticipation rushed through her. She looked across the battlefield to Jace. As he met her gaze, he opened his mind to her. He's trapped like you wanted, she said. Now it's time to destroy him.

Yes. How many more hedrons were out there buried in the bluff? Jace asked. Nissa could sense the excitement in his voice, even in her head. We're going to need another one, no, two actually. Nissa, this is going to work! I have a plan.

So do I. Nissa drew her sword.

But before she could make her advance, Jace pushed her attention toward the hedron ring. He had recreated his superimposed, life-size illusionary diagram. With just two more hedrons to redirect the power we're channeling, I believe we'll be able to destroy the titan without ever having to touch it. The risk is minimal—relatively speaking. If we just...Jace continued talking, but Nissa ceased listening. She didn't want a calculated, clinical strike. She wanted to drive her sword into Ulamog's neck. She wanted to eviscerate him. She wanted to end him, right here and right now. She had promised Jace she would not attempt to destroy the titan until he was trapped; now he was trapped.

She turned to face the land, looking to the rocky bluff, and she reached out for the soul of the world. She called, and Ashaya answered. The elemental rose with a determination Nissa had not yet seen in the world. With a hope that she had never before felt. Zendikar emerged ready, finally, for freedom.

Art by Raymond Swanland

Then something broke. Like a twig snapping underfoot, Ashaya cracked and faltered, pieces of her form crumbling away. Confused, Nissa reached out further, pulling harder. But Ashaya did not respond; her branches convulsed and quavered, and with her, all of Zendikar trembled.

The floating rock Nissa was standing on swayed, slowly at first and then faster, violently. Nissa stumbled, thrusting her arms out for balance. The bucking and quaking was so severe that it felt as though Zendikar was going to tear itself asunder. Then, just as quickly as the quaking had begun, it stopped. The world calmed, and everything was quiet.

But Nissa knew it was a false calm. Something was wrong, she could sense it, something—

A ragged gnashing blasted the silence apart. To Nissa's right, the seawall and everything on it swelled like a tidal wave. Nissa watched in horror as Zendikari and Eldrazi alike were sent flailing into the air and came crashing down on the hard stone wall, only to be thrown back up again as the whole thing reared a second time.

Wide-eyed and wild, Nissa turned back to Ashaya. Zendikar radiated a flood of pain and terror as the elemental crumbled into a pile of rubble.

"Ashaya!" Nissa ran for her friend, but was thrown to her knees as yet another undulation heaved through the world.

Out over the sea to her left, the ring of hedrons rocked as violently as the land. The leylines strained to maintain their formation as surge upon surge of rippling tremors tore across the bay. The prison was going to come undone. But it was not the rocking of the world that was putting strain on it. It was the other way around. The unsettled prison was putting a strain on the world. There, above the prison, Nissa saw a stray hedron, a dark power blasting through it, destroying the integrity of the leyline alignment. It was wrong. It shouldn't have been there. Where had it come from? Anxious, she searched out Jace.

Nissa, get out of there! Jace's cry filled her mind as soon as he had her attention.

With a great, echoing crack, one of the leylines of the prison snapped. The circle was broken. Nissa's heart stopped.

Run, Nissa! Now!

But Nissa didn't run. She launched herself out toward the broken leyline. This couldn't happen. Not now. It was Zendikar's turn.

As she landed on a floating rock near the breach, one of the half-freed hedrons tipped, straining its remaining connection until that connection, too, was shattered. For a breath, the great rock teetered, suspended on the last hint of the magical bond that had held it in place, and then it plummeted toward the sea.

Nissa was drenched by the massive splash that followed the hedron's impact, but she didn't pause to so much as wipe her eyes. This couldn't happen. She reached out to the dangling leyline, the one that had been connected to the fallen hedron, and she pushed her feeling down into the powerful mana the leyline was made of until she could touch it. The moment she succeeded, an unbelievable surge of power rushed into her. She felt stronger than she had ever felt before. But that wasn't important. What was important was where she channeled that power. She would send it through herself and into the other dangling leyline; she would complete the broken circle using her own body. She would fix this.

She reached out for the other leyline, digging down into her own well of strength to stretch herself toward its magic, pouring everything she had into her effort to close the ring. Just a little closer and—

She was knocked off her feet.

Nissa only saw the thick, pink tentacle after it had struck her. Ulamog.

With the integrity of the prison compromised, he had been free to breach its border.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

The hedrons of the ring began to sway, off balance. The leylines were whipped out of her reach. Ulamog would not be contained any longer.

No! Nissa jumped up, springing for the nearest vine, this time with her sword in hand. She set her sights on the titan. This couldn't happen. Trapped or not, she would destroy Ulamog. This was Zendikar's turn.

Swinging from a vine, Nissa brought her sword down on one of Ulamog's flailing tentacles. Her blade didn't so much as leave a scratch, but she didn't care. She struck again. And again. And then the rest of the ring gave way. One by one, the other hedrons plummeted into the sea. Wave after wave of salty seawater splashed up at Nissa as a cacophony of terror-laden screams sounded from behind. Ulamog, free of his bonds, was moving toward Sea Gate once more.

Nissa cried out in anguish. As impossible as their initial success in trapping Ulamog had been, this end seemed all the more unthinkable.

This end?

Was this truly the end?

With that thought, a wave of weakness washed through Nissa, draining her. It was all she could do to force her fingers to hold on to the vine.

Nissa, what are you doing? You have to get out of there! Jace's voice in her head again. He was as desperate as she had ever heard him, but she couldn't bring herself to move. Now! Jace cried.

His anxiety didn't affect her. She stared at the water crashing below. It would be cold if she fell.

The prison is broken, Nissa, Jace's voice was quieter. The demon broke it. There's nothing more to do. Just get out. Please.

The demon...Nissa shook herself. The demon? All at once she felt him, felt the evil of the monster he was. He was here. She looked up. There he was. The demon she had faced back on Bala Ged, the one who had uprooted Khalni Heart, the one who had tried to destroy Zendikar. He had come back.

Art by Chris Rahn

Suddenly it all made sense. His was the darkness she had sensed, he was the thing that had been wrong. It was his hedron that had upset the prison, that had made the land quake. He was the cause of all of this. And now he was casting a spell, a spell so ancient and powerful that Nissa didn't recognize anything more than its vague shape and its complete and consuming darkness. With the casting of this spell, all the land of Zendikar cried out in pain.

"Rise!" the demon screamed.

And something rose.

Nissa turned to see a row of impossibly large, glistening black shards tearing through the ground. Even before the rest of the monster so much as breached the surface, Nissa knew she was looking upon a second titan. Kozilek. The demon had called yet another horror to ravage her world.

Art by Lius Lasahido

She looked back up at the demon, and he smiled down at her. Smiled.

Nissa shuddered, sickened, and in that moment something inside her was uprooted. Some part of her that she recognized from long ago, a piece of herself that she had tried to temper, had tried to forget. There was power in that part of her, and now it was that power that was coursing through her veins. It was not unlike the sensation of the power of the leylines surging through her, but this time she could keep it all for herself. That felt good. Her strength returned tenfold, and she climbed the vine hand over hand, pulling herself up onto the top of the floating rock above.

She stood there staring at the demon. She knew that she should turn away from him. She knew that she should flee—or battle the titans, or help the people, or do anything but what she was about to do. But if she did any of those other things, would it matter? Would her actions make a difference? Was there any hope left, any last shred of hope left to save Zendikar?

If she turned away from the demon, Nissa would have to answer that question. So she did not turn away from the demon. Instead, she looked straight at him, the eyeblight that had stolen her world's last chance to survive. For that, and for everything else, she would end him.

She leapt down onto the thrashing seawall and raced toward the demon, her blade poised, ready to strike. It had been her mistake not to ensure that she had ended him when last they met; she would not make the same mistake again.

As Kozilek rose, the seawall convulsed, the sea swelled, the land shook, and the Zendikari screamed. But that was all happening around Nissa, outside of her sphere of focus, beyond the rage that drove her forward. The only thing could see was the horrid demon, and the only thing she knew was that he was going to die.

Art by Lius Lasahido

As she fought her way past surging spawn and buckling rock toward the winged monster, Nissa was vaguely aware of the influence Kozilek was having on the world around her. She had felt this titan's influence before, back when more of his spawn populated the world. She hadn't much cared for the warping chaos then, and she was not fond of the muddled, snarled effects he was having on the leylines now. The seamless patterns that should have blanketed the world were disrupted and broken. Everything was amiss. Each step she took required a concerted effort to force her foot to contact the land, to overcome the dissection of reality, to compensate for the gravitational distortions. But she pressed forward. Nothing would stop her.

And then the land in front of her erupted. Kozilek's flailing arm had smashed into the seawall, his enormous fist crashing through the rock, sending the lighthouse toppling. The impact launched Nissa into the air, along with shrapnel from the seawall and hundreds of other Zendikari. The world was turned on its head as Nissa hung there, momentarily suspended. Time slowed, and black, iridescent corruption crystallized on the shards of pure white rock and the faces of the people around her. It was as though she was trapped in a frozen pond, suffocated by the press of ice around her.

Then suddenly time started again and gravity doubled or perhaps even tripled, pulling Nissa back down onto the crumbling wall with such a force that the wind was knocked out of her. She tried to stand, but it felt like she was sinking in quicksand. Everything around her was turning into jagged edges and geometric patterns that spoke of things unnatural. She blinked, but she couldn't clear her vision. It all looked the same; she could no longer distinguish between the wall, the sea, and the demon.

She had fallen into Kozilek's field of distortion. She staggered, unsure of where her next step would take her, unsure of where she was or where she was going. Unsure of whether she was even still alive. Had the end come already?

No. No! It was not the end. It could not be. Not until she had destroyed him. The demon was a blemish on her perfect world. The need to remove him from Zendikar drove her forward. She pushed on, putting one foot in front of the other, breathing one breath after the next, until finally she broke free of the reach of the distortion.

Liberated, Nissa raced to the end of the white rock of the seawall and out onto the cliff, straight at the demon. She dove for him, tackling him to the ground, her blade at his neck.

"Good for you." He looked up at her, still smiling that revolting smile. "Finally willing to win. Finally willing to do what it takes."

"You!" Bile rose in the back of Nissa's throat as she plunged her blade downward.

But with one swift movement the demon skirted her sword and dislodged himself, flying up and away, at the same time sending a tide of his essence-draining magic down at Nissa. It struck her before she could get to her feet, sucking the life up out of her veins, drinking in the hatred that was fueling her.

She cried out, reaching for the land, and sent a cascade of earth up toward the demon. But it never touched him; the land pivoted in the air and shot back down at her, following an unnaturally knotted and twisted bundle of leylines.

Nissa rolled away, tumbling across the ground as the rubble rained on her—black and twisted detritus, unnatural and tormented. Panicked, she watched as four spawn of Kozilek's lineage skittered in between her and the demon. Had he called them?

"Alas," the demon said, "my plans must take priority. Zendikar falls." He gave a slight nod, and the spawn closed in on Nissa, driving chunks of rock up around her. "And Zendikar will die."

Art by Ryan Barger

Searing pain tore through Nissa, and she bellowed in agony. Though she hadn't meant for it to, her cry alerted Ashaya. She could feel Zendikar's concern for her as the land around her began to rise up; the world was coming to her aid. But even as it did, it was being warped, broken, and corrupted. It was being ruined.

No. Nissa could not allow it. She pushed Zendikar's soul away. Away from this distortion, away from this blight, away from her. Get back!

Ashaya didn't want to go. The world refused leave her, but Nissa forced it away. There was nothing more either of them could do.

As she let go, she felt her last shred of hope contort into fear under the influence of Kozilek's spawn. Her gut wrenched. The earth, the leylines, the life of the world became so contorted and twisted that they no longer existed.

As the demon laughed, the last of Nissa's reality unraveled.

I laughed at the elf's confused expression, her reality unraveling before her. I couldn't help it. It was funny. Something about the eyes.

"Oh, little elf. Would you like to hear something amusing? If you had simply let me finish my work, I would have regained my spark and left your world. I didn't choose you as an enemy, but now I feel obliged to be the enemy you deserve. Kozilek's distortion will allow you to experience the last hours of Zendikar drawn out over the space of a thousand years. Suffering as I did. Normally I don't care for these kinds of theatrics, but you've earned yourself an exception."

Kozilek's spawn encircled the Joraga, slicing space in such a way that no leyline could reach her, like spiders weaving a web of broken reality. She was cut off from Zendikar. Powerless.

My mind strained to direct the spawn. It was possible, but I knew I was walking the blade's edge. Especially with the titan this close, I risked madness or worse. But as long as I didn't command them to do anything the titan directly opposed, I didn't think it would mind that I was borrowing a few spawn to take care of an insect that was meddling with its work. I leapt back into the sky to survey the rest of the field. It had become a rout. Glorious.

Now it was time to leave this place and never return.

After I had ensured that no survivors escaped Sea Gate, of course, I would leave this place and never return.

Actually, that wasn't important right now. I should just leave this place and never return.

Interesting. Someone was in my head. Unacceptable. Telepaths are the absolute worst. I've had far too much experience with people trying to put things in my head that don't belong there.

I had a vague directional sense pointing me toward the intruder, hidden among the fleeing soldiers below. I hurtled to the ground like a comet and blasted away the Zendikari on impact with the muddy, brine-soaked ground. A blue-robed boy stood tall, unhurt but startled; he reflexively split into dozens of mirror images. Not a bad trick.

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

I whispered a word: the truest name for pain that I had ever learned. In a crackling sphere around me, agony reigned. I felt it as much as he, but I was less of a stranger to pain than this boy. All of the images doubled over, but only one of them actually felt it. It was trivial to pick out the genuine article. I smirked as I lunged for him but shuddered as he met my gaze.

Those eyes hit me like a lance. Discarding subtlety, he assaulted my senses as hard as he could, but that just meant my fist broke his cheekbone instead of taking his head off as I'd intended. He spun to the ground, crumpling into a heap of mud-splattered robes. I stepped forward to snap his neck and be done with it.

Something gripped my wing from behind and tossed me back away from him, shredding the wing in the process. I landed painfully and looked up to see my foe. Though he could have followed up with a second blow before I saw it coming, he had waited. Tall, thick, square-jawed, and determined. A good-looking fellow by most standards. I chuckled as I sized him up. He was willing to strike me from behind to save his friend but wasn't willing to win a fight that way. I liked him immediately. A hero.

I inclined my head to him slightly. "Ob Nixilis. A pleasure. Now, I would ask you to kindly step aside and walk home. You have the look of a general about you, so you must know this war is lost. Was the defense here your doing? Very impressive. I'd love a rematch some time. You pick the world and the terms. But for now..."

He interrupted me with a slash from his metal...quadruple...whip thing. Was he actually wielding a sural? Hadn't seen one of those in centuries, and never on Zendikar. Sural specialists tended to be extremely skilled, or entertainingly short-lived. I sidestepped the attack, annoyed.

Art by Dan Scott

"These people are under my protection, demon. Stand down, or I will take you down." He really sounded like he meant it, too.

"Disappointing. Back in my day, if you'll pardon the expression, there was a certain civility to all this. But I guess Planeswalkers aren't what they used to be. For one, they die a lot easier." I raised my palm and let loose a sustained torrent of pure enervation.

And this fellow just stood there with a vexing smirk on his face and a golden glow surrounding his body. Invulnerability! This was shaping up to be more interesting than I had expected.

"Not that easy," he quipped, and he charged, slashing at me in wide arcs. He charged hard but didn't overcommit on distance—he had a reach advantage, and he wasn't giving me an opening to close to a grapple. I kept him at bay with more blasts of energy; most he evaded, but a few struck home. Each time he managed to brace himself with that golden glow of his. Tactical consideration: his protection required him to focus. He had a fluid expertise with it, though. He was flawlessly weaving the shield into his series of attacks, giving me no real openings. More than once, I caught slashes on my forearms, but the wounds were superficial and healed rapidly. He kept me in a defensive posture, and he didn't bite on any of my feints. We fought back to a neutral position; he had managed to maneuver himself between me and the telepath again.

"You fight well, but you can't hurt me, and I won't let you harm any more of these people. I fight for Zendikar, demon." There was plenty of determination in his voice, but I could see the beginnings of doubt edging its way around his face. That's how it always begins.

"Nixilis." I corrected. "And you mean...these people?" I casually flicked a beam of energy into a huddle of stragglers and wounded. Six dead. He flinched as if to press the attack again, but he wouldn't leave his position defending the telepath. "Or do you mean him? Oh, my friend. The telepath has gotten to you, hasn't he? This is why you always kill the telepaths first. How sure are you that you're protecting him of your own free will? How sure are you that he hasn't done a little work in that head of yours?"

His eyes flicked off to the side—back to the telepath—just for a moment. That brief instant was all it took for doubt to open the crack a little wider. And in that tiny moment in time, I was charging forward, and for that tiny fraction of a second, his weight was on his back foot.

There are moments like this in battle, where time stands still. Where the joy of combat overwhelms the senses and the passage of time. He lashed out at me as he dropped into a wrestler's stance, but the strike was high and wide. When our eyes met, I could see that look of joy in his face as well. He loved the fight just as much as I did. Good. I wouldn't have it any other way.

He dropped low to meet my charge, but I was ready for it; he tried to sweep my leg, but, with a single beat of my undamaged wing, I vaulted over him and slashed at him with a clawed hand. His shield deflected the blow, but the impact pushed him a foot farther from me than he wanted to be, and he closed with an explosive charge. I had time to brace for it and settle into a low stance. I had the superior weight and strength, but he was quicker, with a lower center of gravity. I didn't know his exact fighting style, but I was familiar enough with the general type to anticipate what was coming next.

I gave him a target and he took it. He locked his legs against my knee and started to press—a perfectly executed takedown and joint lock. I was heavier than he was, but he'd still be able to break the knee in just a few seconds.

I used those seconds to get control of his right arm, locking it back behind my neck as we grappled close. We splashed in the mud, blood, brine, ichor, and worse, struggling for control—and he was the better wrestler. The knee cracked and a sickening jolt pulsed through my body. The problem for him, however, was that he was expecting that to be the end of the fight, while, in fact, having my knee broken was merely the third worst sensation I had experienced in the last hour.

I used my one good leg and my superior weight to pin him. He gritted his teeth, face splattered with the same mud that covered me, that covered all of us, that covered this miserable, doomed world. He channeled his focus to keep his shoulder from breaking. But I had him. I had him and he knew it.

Art by Cliff Childs

"You fight for Zendikar? For this broken dung-heap of a world? Well, see how it rewards you!" I pressed his face down hard into the muddy water. He thrashed and flailed, he sputtered and coughed, struggling to get purchase. I could feel the despair and fear as his hands slipped in the mud.

As he batted uselessly at me.

As he started to drown.

Invulnerability proved no match for three inches of dirty water.

"This is Zendikar! The suffering and the waste and the filth! This is Zendikar!" He convulsed once more, and his body went limp.

I held him there for a second more before I released my grip and flipped him onto his back with a splash.

"This is Zendikar," I whispered. "And your fight is over."

3

Reclamation

By Mel Li

The elves of Zendikar have spent generations adapting to the plane's ever-changing environment. Resilient and fearless against the destruction of the Roil and the Eldrazi, their close-knit villages seemed to regrow with the speed of the jungles themselves.

But with the coming of the Eldrazi, two of the three great elf nations—the Mul Daya and the Joraga—were nearly eliminated. For the Mul Daya, a group steeped in tradition and familial ties, survivors were torn between either staying to die with their village Speakers in the devastated remains of their land or venturing far away to seek assistance. Greenweaver Mina and her brother Denn are two lone refugees who have traveled an entire continent away to Murasa in search of aid and the means to reclaim their fallen home.

Days, weeks had passed traveling through the Blight. The humid, heavy breath of the ancient Guum forests gave way to a desiccated whisper of plains laid bare by skittering feet. Mina had kept careful watch over the passages of the sun, bearing steadily toward a location she had only ever heard of in reluctant murmurs or vague accounts.

Close now, close. She reassured herself.

The dust from the Blight covered her clothes and coated her bare feet. The tough, ossified ground left patterned imprints on soles more closely accustomed to the dense mosses of her lost homeland. Resolute, but footsore, she reached the ravine that formed the outskirts of the Murasan forests.

Or what had once been the forests. The Blight was a blinding pure white and rose in twisted spires that had once been trees, animals, rocks. The sheer cliffs were immaculately blank, silence reverberating through the valley. The silence weighed heavily on her—since her childhood she had been surrounded by the sounds of her land, her elders, her family. Whispers, yells, commands, pleas...their sounds had always tethered her to something, someone. Here she was a lone piece of color and noise, an affront to the blankness around her.

She kicked at the ground absently, and a cloud of white dust obediently wafted up and fell back down in ashen flakes. Like snow without winter, she mused. The blankness filled her vision and her ears with the dull-ringing white noise of senses desperate for purpose. She turned slowly, her keen red eyes scanning the horizon for signs of color, sound, life. The blank cliff faces leered back at her. So the Blight had reached all the way here as well.

Art by Jason Felix

Ancestors, she mentally swore. Denn will not be pleased. She had been convinced they could find the Tajuru Grove here, and the two had parted ways at midday to cover more ground in their search.

Mina's fists clenched around her long knife, the familiar wooden handle and heft of it settling pleasantly into place. A surge of familiar bitterness rose in her chest, savage and warm, rattling against her ribs. She let out a long, ragged tone that reverberated back at her from the ravine below. She smiled, satisfied with any way to break the oppressive silence.

From the other end of the ravine, something stirred. A shape twice Mina's size scuttled forward into the light, the tapping of bony appendages against the rigid surface of the blighted ground. Her breath caught in her chest—the creature couldn't have wandered too far from its feeding ground, perhaps there was new ground yet? It turned towards her with a dull hiss.

Excellent, it had seen her. Mina grinned, baring a mouthful of pointed teeth. She hastened down into the ravine, leaving a cloud of dust and shattered Blight with the graceless enthusiasm of a baloth pup. Reaching the floor of the ravine, she barreled towards the creature, unsheathing her knife from her belt as she lunged forward in a fluid reflexive motion.

The thing paused, eyeless face throwing forth feelers in her direction, pseudopods blooming from its skin and bristling along its radial crests. A keening sound emitted from the crest of its body, perhaps in some harmony with commands Mina could not hear. She dove beneath its primary mass, gripping pseudopods in one hand and finding flesh with the other, the engraved blade of her knife gliding with satisfying ease, carving paths into the creature's underside. Blood pounded in Mina's temples; the flesh of its back was rubbery and unexpectedly cool to the touch. A cut that would have spilled the guts of any ordinary beast instead produced a meager drip of acrid gray fluid.

Not an unfamiliar outcome for their kind. She welcomed the chance to express her gratitude for her dusty, footsore state with a messier approach.

Dodging the whip of a sinuous limb, she grabbed it as it passed and clambered up its length—they were sturdy as any root or branch, which she was well equipped to handle. On its back, she gripped behind its bony head-plate, piercing beneath it with her knife and twisting it with relish. The thing immediately collapsed beneath her, limbs twitching. Mina leapt off its back and stood back, waited for it to rise.

It stayed on the ground, phantom nerves helplessly pulling at severed limbs. Mina reached down for its head and pulled it up towards her, staring into its vacant face.

What were you seeking here? Why do you stay? The mask stared back, impassive. There was no emotion to read on it, no panic in death, no begging or bargaining, no pity. The elves had always been a resilient people, weathering the roiling landscape as it shifted and changed. They coexisted with the Roil's inconsistencies, left their dead in shallow graves under the protective grasp of the jaddi roots. The elders had thought the tide of Eldrazi would, like the Roil, force them to adapt and change. Instead, they drowned.

The creature's flailing slowed and stopped. Mina dropped it to the ground with a dull thud.

From the shadows of the ravine, two new humanoid figures emerged, one of them very familiar. Like Mina, her twin brother Denn was unarmored, barefoot, visibly unarmed save for their long knives carved from the poisonous woods of the Guum.

In place of armor, vine-like markings snaked over both of their arms, messages bearing the words and lineage of their kin—dead, living, unborn—their murmurs crystallized onto skin. When the two left Bala Ged, they took with them the bones of their fallen that now adorned their dark red hair.

Behind Denn stood a slight, hooded woman clad in leather armor from pauldrons to stirruped boots. Unmarked and solemn, she led her mount behind her. There was no mistaking the sturdy construction and expert workmanship of her armor—a sentry of the Tajuru elf nation.

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

Mina scrambled to meet the pair, bowing her head to the Tajuru, eager to converse with the elf. But Denn had already noticed the pulp of the Eldrazi corpse behind her, and regarded her sternly.

"Did you know they'd already passed this far into Murasa?" Denn asked Mina with forced slowness, his voice cracking with rising panic.

"We're close. This was where they'd told us!" Mina flashed him a reckless smile that she hoped would mask her doubt.

"That was weeks ago now! Has there still been nothing since?" Denn's face was stubbornly solemn—he'd learned the true meanings of Mina's expressions many times over.

Mina stared at him, wishing she had words to say to him. The silence hung between them, a rift, wedging the twins apart.

Denn looked away first. "Our Speaker had never said anything about this."

It was Mina's turn to look down, hands clenching helplessly into fists.

"More than far enough, to be certain," the stranger answered from behind him in lilting Tajuru tones before Mina could respond. "I've been sent to warn travelers away from this place, and found you two on my patrol." She paused, looking them over. "I am Warden Tenru, one of the many guardians of these Tajuru lands. It seems you've both strayed far from your village...?" she said, raising an eyebrow.

Mina wiped her knife on the fallen Eldrazi and swept its dead flesh from her arms. "We are Mul Daya."

"'We'?" Tenru asked, peering behind Mina into the emptiness of the ravine. "Are you scouts? Where are the others?"

Mina sighed inwardly. Words had never come easily to her. Her head was always so full of sound and instinct that the words would bubble up and trip over themselves instead of leaving her mouth. Others would just tumble out before she could give them form and meaning. But this, this was important, and she had practiced this speech for weeks during their travels.

"Months ago, we Mul Daya had stayed in our homes in Guum, reassured by our Speaker that our Ancestors insisted we stand our ground. The scions arrived first, and the defenses led by our vine ghosts beat them back."

She nodded toward Denn, whose sullen silence gave no sign of acknowledgement. "But as the scions gave rise to their full-grown kin, the ranks of the vine ghosts thinned and our borders shrank so close as to touch the edges of the shallow graves of the elders."

She paused, remembering their eyes staring up at her from their loamy beds, recalled how she had dreamt of their dreams. It was their essence, their memories, generations of history that had been processed into dust along with the groves they dwelled in.

"Droves of us fell in defense of our homes. Our speaker fell ill and the voices of our Ancestors were silenced." she continued. Mina felt strangely detached from herself, listening to her own voice. Her own words sounded hollow and formal, with none of the visceral weight of the shame, pride, frustration from that time.

"The Eldrazi arrived, conquered, fed, and left." She felt the slightest quaver enter her voice and stopped for a second to breathe in slowly. "I had...a vision as I slept near our dead. A vision of the destruction of Bala Ged. I took my brother during the night to seek audience from the Elven Nations. To ask them for aid, guidance."

"And you?" Tenru asked gently. "What are you called?"

"My name is Mina, Greenweaver of the Mul Daya." She rolled up her right sleeve to reveal the rank's insignia, carved deeply in wine-red ink on her forearm.

Mina saw Tenru size up what she was sure appeared to be a matted, dusty, inexperienced mess in front of her. Tenru raised a doubting eyebrow, but nodded politely.

"The conclave isn't located in any one place, but shifted with the incoming tides of Eldrazi," Tenru said. "Our motions are now a strategic network of planning and scouting, keeping close to what remained of the world they knew, careful of being encircled like...like our sisters".

Mina's jaw clenched involuntarily.

"I've patrolled the borderlands, bringing word of the Blight's spread back to the conclave," Tenru continued. "Their newest wave struck suddenly two nights ago, in greater numbers than we'd anticipated. We took our homes and retreated back toward the heart of the Grove—"

"The Grove still stands?" Mina bolted upright, eyes shining. "Please—take us there?"

The jaddi grove jutted up from midst of the valley, splitting through earth and slowly dissolving slabs of rock beneath the unyielding grip of its roots. A dense canopy of perennially green leaves reached up into the cloud line where the humidity was densest. Spiraling patterns of leaves, each the length of an elf, festooned its many offshoots. In quieter times, the hollowed interiors of fallen trees had served as permanent homes. While the Mul Daya had made their homes amongst its roots, the Tajuru had become accustomed to the upper reaches of the branches, hidden from the view of the land-bound Eldrazi. This adaptation had kept them safe for years, until new waves of monsters arrived from the air itself.

The three stood atop the ridge, staring down at the Grove. As the clouds shifted, sunlight fell over the valley.

Mina heard Tenru inhale sharply, breath catching in her lungs.

The ground here was completely unlike the pale nothing of the ravine. In its place, a dazzling array of vibrant colors refracted from the sharp facets of the rock. Some formations had crystallized vertically, in a twisted mockery of the trees that had once stood in their place. A thick, oily sheen oozed out from the multifaceted surface like an open wound, forming a slick coat on the remains of the undergrowth.

"What...is that?" Mina breathed. From the corner of her eye, she saw Denn shake his head in horrified awe.

Art by Raymond Swanland

Below the encampment, a group of Eldrazi had gathered, proboscises grasping onto its roots. One had scaled to the first offshoot, dislodging the tents of the settlement from their high perches and tumbling them to the forest floor. Residents of the encampment had retreated to their homes in the highest branches.

Denn faced Mina, his face pale and drawn. "When we stood before the Speaker, I valued our blood over my word. I followed you when no others would, an entire continent away. I was ready to join the rest of our kin in the ground, our ground. And here, we've come so far, haven't we? From one plagued village to watching this one wither and perish...an entire world away".

Tenru's face darkened at his words. "Watch your tone, Mul Daya—this is my home. I grieve for your loss, but never asked your help. We have no intention of succumbing to your same fate."

Mina tore through the valley, sliding over the slick, flat surfaces toward the Eldrazi as they gathered to feed. Like their brethren on Bala Ged, these too had deadly clusters of limbs and mouths. They pulled their pale masses up through the boughs on powerful forelimbs to draw sustenance from the trees and ground. But instead of bony plating, their bodies were insectoid and full of impossible symmetries. Above their heads sat crowns of delicate plating of a polished black stone so dark it seemed to both absorb and reflect light.

Her knife still fouled with the fibrous gristle of the spawn from the ravine, Mina rushed at her closest foe. A sinuous hulking thing, its bulk was bloated from feeding and strained against the shell of its exoskeleton. Its smooth plates were the same depthless black as its crowned head, all angles and symmetry with no space for pity. Its many legs were crusted with eyes that glowed with unblinking, gemlike shapes. She swung the knife forward, slinging all her strength and momentum with it, aiming to spill open whatever innards the creature might hold.

The weapon reverberated with the unexpected impact to the Eldrazi's outer mass, sending shockwaves down her arm and through to her teeth. She reeled, her numbed fingers dropping the knife. Behind her, she heard Denn scream and run toward her.

A dull, oddly familiar sound filled her ears. Was it jangled nerves? The force of the impact?

She struggled to her feet, holding her head in one hand and scrabbling for her knife with the other. She grasped something solid and looked up...

...into the four slavering jaws of a black-crowned Eldrazi. She flinched away instinctively, but it was too late. She clenched her eyes shut.

It screamed. Or she thought it did. A shrill chorus of tones, barely audible to her brain, vibrated through her skull. She felt something warm in her right ear.

Blood.

Pain bloomed along her body, matching the waves of vibrations that racked her frame.

Blind panic seized her, and she scrambled backward on all fours like a hunted animal. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Denn reaching out to her and whirled toward him.

The monster turned toward them, abdomen distended with air, and wailed.

Art by Jason Felix

The colors on the edge of Mina's vision blurred. In front of her, Denn's form collapsed and reformed in waves, the red of his hair and eyes draining from his body and bleeding into the edges of her vision. His outstretched arm was deflected in the opposite direction, bending at an impossible angle. His mouth opened and the words drifted helplessly from his mouth, his tongue unable to form their sounds, the air passing uselessly through his lungs. They hung in the air, meaningless and small, and dissipated.

Mina thrust her arm forward toward his and felt her muscles sag uselessly, her bones flowing like viscous smoke through the air, impossibly slowly. Her fingers drifted apart, their tendons unwinding from the bone, veins distending and tangling.

Even the ground beneath her turned to viscous liquid, sagging and flowing beneath her weight. Her legs were impossibly heavy, pulling her down and away from her outstretched arm. Her other arm found the hilt of her knife, and struggled to hold it as she unwound.

Instinct propelled the blade from her hand, travelling outside the path of the monster's wail, striking it in one of its many gemlike eyes.

Its wailing stopped for a moment, and Mina's body collapsed like a rag doll. The impact sent her crashing through the weakened Blight below her.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a shallow depression, wind knocked out of her, head pounding. The light of day filtered down from above her, and she could see the underside of the thin, brittle layer of Blight that she had fallen through, the way a layer of ice covers the waters of a winter pond.

The dull, familiar rhythm had returned. It was louder now. She struggled to find the thread of sound below the rumble of the beasts above her. It rose and fell like a breath, or was it...a voice? She tried to form patterns from it, shape the frequencies into meaning. From what felt like miles above her, the sounds of Denn's voice filtered into her waning consciousness.

Mi-nah. Mee-na.

She crouched in the darkness, hands on the ground to steady herself. The sounds in her head were whispers. They were the voices she had heard in Bala Ged, of her elders, her jaddi. Her family. They melded together into something familiar. What was it they were saying?

Her brow furrowed, hands clenching involuntarily around something...familiar.

The ground under her hand was not the hard surface of the Blight. It was land, the thick, fragrant soils of her youth. Time's inexorable wheels stopped for her, suspended in a synesthetic bubble of collective memories. The smell of that same patch of soil baked by summer, boot-trodden, stained by blood or green with new spring growth, filled her lungs. She watched it with eyes that were not hers. The sounds rushed into her head again.

Mina.

"Mina!" Her brother's voice cut through her reverie, breaking her concentration.

Denn!

A hand blotted out the light over Mina's head, and she felt herself lifted up and out of the ground in her brother's arms. She could smell the blood on them, though she knew not whose it was.

A whooshing sound passed just over their heads, and the ground behind them swelled and burst before their eyes. The impact of the errant wail left a cratered trail in its wake.

"Denn! They're here! The Ancestors are still with us! There's land under the Blight here!"

"Mina? Slow down, you're bleeding, we need to move—"

Mina reached up and cradled her brother's head as the next wail hurtled straight towards them, and dropped the handful of soil.

The particles exploded into life, each expanding into a wall of thick stems, roots, and earth that shook as the wave of sound struck it, the outlines of its impact forming a kaleidoscopic stain in its center.

"Listen!"

The sounds in Mina's head were deafening now. Multilayered and toned, it blended choruses of voices and noises of all pitches, frequencies, volumes. A calm settled over her. She took a deep breath, cupped her hand over Denn's ear, and they all rushed from her lips like a ruptured dam.

Some words were angry, tender, sullen, a secret language shared with a sibling whose voice she felt as her own. Some tumbled out in rumbling reprimand, stern warnings she had heard long ago. Others were a language and a tone that she felt but did not know, the warm gusts of wind in summer, the dull ache of regret. It was the sound of memories congealed in time and space. A calm settled over Mina, and she wove her words around Denn's wounded flesh and hands.

His eyes widened, surprise washing away any attempts at feigned callousness. "Are these the Ancestors' voices? Where did you learn to speak in their voices? What do they tell you?"

Mina only nodded, and said nothing.

Another wail shattered the vine wall, the packed earth and thick curling stems falling into brittle, coruscating pieces. Mina turned slowly to face the creature, arms outstretched, and began to speak.

In one sound, she spoke of her childhood home in the steaming jungles of the Guum, crouched in the undergrowth, listening to the rain. Pillars of wet earth and rock erupted from the ground, sending great jagged cracks racing across the surface like lightning over the facets of the Blight, tumbling the monsters from its face. The Eldrazi bellowed and stumbled to regain their footing.

In the next she told stories she had never known, but that she knew were true. Stories of bravery and sacrifice. She pulled her second knife from its place at her hip. It was warm and smelled of damp leaves. She inhaled deeply and grinned to herself with savage zeal.

Art by Izzy

This time, her cut slid easily through the carapace, her other hand plunging into the opened shell and ripping out whatever she could find underneath. Armored in cold obstinacy, she carved her knife in lazy circles through its pale body, spilling out pools of its essence.

Behind her, something brushed past her shoulder as Denn felled another of the monsters, its body crashing to the ground as he severed its insectile legs. His laughter settled and froze for a second as she grasped and crystallized it into memory. It had been a long time since last she had heard it.

She reached the roots of the jaddi. The crowned ones had spotted her now, reeking of power and new life, and raced down from the boughs towards her like arrows to their quarry. They pooled around her in a frenzy of clicking feet and open jaws.

Mina saw the top of Denn's head disappear in the crush of crowned beasts. A deep rumbling radiated outward from beneath her feet. Thick roots tore through the ground, enveloping the armored bodies of the Eldrazi and pulling them in through the cracks in the earth. Boughs of the jaddi snaked forward and pulled the rest into the body of the tree itself, encasing them in bark. The surface of the valley splintered into scintillating plates of Blight, then sank into the soft new earth that surged from below Mina and Denn's feet.

Tenru arrived soon after, joined by a group of a dozen heavily armed Tajuru and their mounts. Behind their ranks stood a fair-haired elf, smaller in stature but with a calm and gravitas that most often accompanied age. Her leather armor was intricately engraved, though harshly weathered by years of use. They hunkered in close to Mina, who had collapsed with her back propped up against the tree roots, cleaning her wounds.

"So you are our kin from across the water?" the fair-haired elf asked. She picked up Mina's fallen knife, nearly hidden beneath the shattered layer of Blight, and handed her the hilt.

"My pardon," Tenru interjected, "these are Greenweaver Mina and her brother Denn. Ghost vines of the Mul Daya".

The fair-haired elf smiled kindly and bowed her head. "We welcome you as all our elven kind. Let distance and generations not separate us. What news do you bring from your kin?"

Mina bowed her head in return, steeling herself to speak, though the words came easily this time. "I've come in search of Nisede, leader of the Tajuru, with the request that she accept aid from us, the...survivors of Bala Ged."

"I am Nisede. What of your Speaker? Has he sent you in his place?"

Mina's cheeks burned. As she started to speak, Denn gently interrupted. "We...are unsure. But I know that Mina, too, can speak with the voices of our kin. I've heard it. I—we ask to join you, that we can hold the memories of the Mul Daya safe."

Nisede's face turned grave and her speech became slow and thoughtful.

"My elves will continue to adapt and move, as we always have. We have heard word of a Zendikari encampment, near the Halimar Basin. An alliance of kor, human, and merfolk has arisen to make our stand or fall trying. I cannot promise you a safe place for your histories, but I can promise that we can deliver you to give your strength and your stories to the strongest place we know of."

The others nodded solemnly.

"Today we march to join them. Our leader is called 'Tazri,' a human from a city set on the coast of the Halimar. The city of Sea Gate."

4

The Blight We Were Born For

By Ken Troop

Zendikar nears its final hours. The machinations of Ob Nixilis, the demon Planeswalker, have freed the Eldrazi titan Ulamog from its prison and summoned its fellow titan Kozilek from Zendikar's depths. Both titans now ravage the land with their innumerable broods, and the Planeswalkers dedicated to stopping the Eldrazi—Gideon, Nissa, Jace, Kiora, and Chandra—have either been defeated or gone missing.

The remnants of Gideon's army are now left in the hands of Tazri, a human soldier who served as the right hand of the previous commander-general of the Zendikari army, Vorik, and has been serving Gideon in the same capacity. Tazri has been a brave and loyal soldier, and yet was unable to inspire the Zendikari the way the outsider Gideon Jura has. Now the vanishingly small chances Zendikar has in the wake of the combined Eldrazi assault rest in Tazri's hands.

Your hope cannot be betrayed when you have none to lose. That thought was Tazri's consolation these many years, and especially during the rise of the Eldrazi. Each setback and disaster in the long, slow defeat had been received without distress. What point suffering in a war you never thought you could win?

But she hadn't counted on Gideon. Just minutes ago, Tazri and her troops had watched in amazement as Gideon delivered the impossible. Ulamog, the great titan of destruction, now shackled and contained. Have we really won? It was the closest Tazri had come to feeling delight in a long time, the closest she could come. Vorik was right. He was right to choose Gideon over me. That thought was painful, but she was still stunned at the new, improbable futures opening up in front of them. They were going to win. Zendikar was going to survive. Gideon had willed them to victory.

Until Kozilek had risen. Until the god of tricksters had played the biggest trick of all. He had waited for Tazri to experience hope before destroying everything.

Art by Richard Wright

With Kozilek's arrival, Ulamog had been freed. Both titans were now loose and amok amidst the Zendikari army. Tazri rallied her soldiers away from the collapsing Sea Gate, a reaction more reflexive than strategic. We are going to die here. All the preparations, all the victories and sacrifices, all the tales the soldiers told themselves of hope and redemption, all now reduced to the stark truth they knew in their bones. The end is always faster and bloodier than you expect. Kozilek had risen, and many horrific ends followed his wake.

They fled down the desiccated slope outside of Sea Gate, her soldiers keeping the barest semblance of discipline in their devastation and fear. Tazri aimed them toward the cover of thick-wooded hills inland, to regroup and plan. Hordes of Eldrazi still harried them from the sky, sea, and land, but the biggest threats to continued existence were the two titans loose at Sea Gate.

A loud rumbling bellowed behind them. Tazri and the soldiers turned to see what the rumbling announced. The towering obsidian figure of Kozilek filled the horizon. Impossibly gigantic, the titan ate up the light from the sky. It hurt to look at him directly for more than a few seconds, causing a sharp jab of pain behind the eyes for any who dared. Kozilek was striding at an angle toward them, and Tazri was relieved to see he would miss them by a few hundred feet.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

But as Kozilek moved over the horizon, a shimmering wave of something roamed over the land, a pulsating, translucent ripple emanating outward in all directions from the great titan. The wave rushed toward them, and Tazri didn't even have time to scream as it crashed upon them.

Time slowed. Insanity blossomed. Romoe's skin inverted itself, ripping and shredding on the sides of his body as he turned inside out, screaming only for a moment before mercifully dying. As the wave passed over Magain, he visibly became younger, transforming into a young stripling, then a child, then a baby, and then a small mote before vanishing, all in the space of several seconds. Debins turned to run and suddenly the left side of his body was gone. Half of him sheared away in a flat square pressed to the ground, a bloody stain where some invisible force had ground him into the bare earth. The other half of Debins floated free in the air, seemingly no longer tethered to the ground or reality. The half of his face that had not been squished had a look of profound surprise and horror, even as it floated higher into the air.

Art by Chris Rallis

The wave hit Tazri. The angel's halo around Tazri's collar glowed with golden heat. Time, previously slowed, now stretched. Events and actions from her past and future flickered in her mind, became her mind, became her now. All her previous life, flickering, flickering into existence. All her future life, flickering, flickering into existence. Time and space stretched further, straining. Snapping. Reality stopped.

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"Halt!" Tazri raised her hand, and the wagons in the merchant caravan rumbled to a stop. The guards had all seen the crows circling the hills to the west. Mahir would want her to press on, but something felt wrong. That's why he pays me. To yell at me when I delay his precious cargo. Mahir raised a flap from inside a tented wagon, but when he saw her face he sighed and let the flap drop. This was her seventh caravan trip with Mahir, and he had already made her captain of his guard two trips ago, though she had not yet seen a full twenty years of life. The youngest he had ever had, though of course he wouldn't tell her that. But she knew anyway. And she knew to slow down and pay attention when something was wrong.

"Golamin, Rillem, ride out wide, north and south, one each. Use horns if anything looks remotely funny and then right back here. Don't be heroes. Something's wrong. Romoe, you're with me." The men nodded and Golamin rode north on the trail as Rillem rode south. One of Mahir's nameless twin bodyguards was driving his wagon. Tazri never could tell the twins apart, and they didn't speak her language anyway, so she just pointed at the tall cliffs to the east and mimed looking out. Neither twin was the brightest of men, but she expected he understood enough. She made sure the rest of the caravan drivers had their horns at the ready. She headed west on her horse, Romoe just behind her.

The middle of the Tazeem run was usually the easy part. The merfolk mostly kept to themselves, and while vampires made raids on the coast of Tazeem over from Guul Draz, they rarely came this far inland. Usually the only excitement in this part of the run was a rampaging baloth or the ground falling away into a pit cave. But the crows knew something exciting was happening. Or had already happened. Tazri ignored the acid in her stomach and pressed on.

Art by Jonas De Ro

They came upon the first corpse after they crested a large hill onto a flat grassy plain. The corpse had been split in half lengthwise. A very, very dead vampire. The edges of each half of the corpse were jagged and burnt. A sword, a large sword, and presumably on fire. Tazri didn't know who she hoped had won the fight, the vampires or the other side.

There were more corpses, and Tazri and Romoe dismounted, though they still held their reins. The horses were skittish. Five more vampire corpses, though the deaths were less violent; mere decapitations and bleed-outs instead of sundered corpses, with burnt flesh marking each jagged cut. Tazri had only fought against a vampire once, and she would have easily died were it not for the fact it was four versus one. The vampire had been faster than her, and stronger than her, and killed with sickening ease. She did not want to fight whatever was able to kill six vampires with a flaming sword.

They heard a female voice humming a strange melody before they saw the body the voice belonged to. The angel was lying against a tall outcrop of rocks, her body half-turned and twisted. Both wings on one side were ripped off entirely, the others bent and torn. Blood and a faint white glow gushed from her side. It was a lot of blood. There were bites and gashes on her arms and torso, and even more blood leaked from her neck. Three more vampires lay dead around her, one with a giant sword through his chest and one with his neck nearly snapped off. The angel turned her head to look at them, and though every part of her was ravaged, her halo still glowed a beautiful, lustrous gold.

The angel coughed, blood and more of the white glow sputtering up from her breath onto her chest. How is she still alive? Tazri had never before beheld an angel, and regarded her beauty and power in stunned silence.

"Can you...can you help me?" Each faint word haltingly uttered caused more coughing, more blood, more dying. Tazri, who had killed and seen friends killed often in her young life, who had never before shed tears during a fight, began crying.

"We have no healer." Mahir would never splurge for something so expensive. "Can we move you? Can you heal yourself?" Tazri knew the question was ridiculous, but the thought of someone killing nine vampires was ridiculous. Who knew what an angel could do?

The angel shook her head. "I am. I am dying. Might...days. Help." The angel stared at the sword at Tazri's side, still in its scabbard. No. No!

"If you can last, we can get you help, we can go back to Sea Gate or Coralhelm, find someone..." One, two, three horns blared in the distance. No!

"Tazri..." Romoe's voice, pulling her back.

"You can heal, we can find someone..." Tazri's mind raced, desperate for answers.

The angel's voice, weak and reedy, still cut her off. "The vampires...coming back. There are more. They have healers. They will keep me...alive, a...long time. Please. Help me. End. Me." The angel gazed once more at Tazri's sword, and then back at Tazri. Their eyes met, and Tazri beheld the pain and the longing there. The longing to be safe from fear and pain.

The horns sounded again, all of them.

"Tazri, we have to go back, right? Tazri!" The panic grew in Romoe's voice.

Tazri wiped away her tears. She drew her sword.

"Tazri? Killing an angel is bad. Don't do it. It's a curse. Everyone knows that. Tazri, we have to go. We have to leave her." Romoe sounded like the child he nearly was.

The angel grimaced, still staring up at her. Blood trickled out of her mouth. "He is...right. There is a...price. Killing me will cost...you. I cannot...cannot stop it. I am...sorry. Please...do it. Please do not...abandon."

The horns, a third time.

Tazri raised her sword. The angel's halo glowed a candescent white, a blinding, burning glow, and Tazri heard a beautiful voice inside her head, though she could not make out any of the words. Then the halo dimmed, and the glow died. The voice inside her head abruptly ceased.

The hilt of Tazri's sword became cold to the touch, and she left it embedded in the chest of the angel. There was a small, still smile on the angel's face. The acid and anxiety were gone from Tazri's stomach, but something else was gone, too. Something she couldn't quite name. She reached down to take the dull gray halo from the angel's eyes. It parted easily from the corpse with her touch. All things beautiful tear so easily. Tazri and Romoe mounted their horses and turned around amidst the cry of the horns.

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Tazri kept her head down, waiting to be called. She didn't expect to be here long. Word spread fast along the caravan roads. The last few attempts to get work had ended without them even letting her speak. Now she was reduced to asking for a militia position. Once upon a time she would have been enraged at the thought. Now she just sat on the bench, and waited.

"Tazri." She looked up at the deep voice. He was medium height but with a broad, strong build, with thick legs and arms. A fighter's build. Even the way he stood bespoke a natural balance and strength she associated with good fighters. Most militia she had come across were fat or old and could only dream of being caravan guards. It spoke well of this Vorik that he had such a capable soldier in his retinue.

"Yes. I'm here to see Vorik." She hated the tinge of desperation in her voice, hated that she was eager to join a bunch of sedentary bureaucrats who probably regarded their plans for lunch as a major adventure.

But she hated even more the thought of not getting the work. Of being alone.

Art by David Gaillet

The man smiled. A broad, easy smile that a few years ago might have quickened her heart. "I'm Vorik. Why are you here, Tazri?"

She hesitated, unsure of where to begin. Even how to begin. She just looked at him, and remained silent. There were other jobs, certainly, right? There were other militias besides Sea Gate. She thought furiously about who else she knew, who else could...

"Four years ago, you were the youngest caravan captain on the Tazeem roads, the prized jewel of Mahir, who so covets his talented workers. You were wicked with a sword..." he looked down briefly at her side, "...hmm, a mace? A brutal weapon, and difficult to wield well."

A spark flared in Tazri and she rose to look Vorik in the eye. "I'm wicked with a mace, too. You can find out if you'd like. I don't use swords anymore."

"Fair enough." There was the smile again, though this time she just found it annoying. She didn't need to be reminded of the life she had, of what she had lost.

"And then Mahir fired you. As did the next five merchants who thought they were getting such a great bargain. The amazing Tazri, who was no longer quite so amazing. So again, Tazri. Why are you here?"

She wanted to tell him, I no longer dream. It's not that I don't remember them. I just don't have them anymore. I used to dream of places I had seen as a guard, of my parents, of fights and loves and fears. And now there's an emptiness between when I go to sleep and when I wake up, and the emptiness is still there after I rise. It's there right now, it's always there, and I don't know how to fill it. How do you replace something for which you no longer know the name?

She wanted to say all those things, but she couldn't, so she didn't. She waited instead.

"As it happens, I like soldiers who don't talk much. And I understand soldiers who need time to work through things. We all do, Tazri. I could use a fighter like you. And a leader like you. I know what you can be. Can you be that leader again, Tazri?"

Tazri nodded her head mutely. If she had been able to cry, she'd be bawling. But instead she just continued to nod, hoping desperately she could be that person again, while a part of her knew that Tazri was gone forever.

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"...hope. I have hope that that is not true. I have hope that there is still a chance for Zendikar. Gideon Jura, you have given me hope."

Each time Vorik spoke the word, it was like a sword through her chest. Hope. Was this life's revenge for her inability to help him?

You saved me, and now I cannot save you.

And he had saved her. She had worked for him for fifteen years. Fifteen good years where she had risen to truly be his right hand. She would never again be the leader she was back when she was young and everything was easy. Back before the angel. But with Vorik's help, and Vorik's patience, and Vorik's trust, she had found other ways of being valuable. Of being valued.

Art by Anna Steinbauer

She was lost inside the morass of her own grief when Vorik's words broke through her despair. "...when I am gone, you will lead these people. You will reclaim Sea Gate, Commander-General Jura."

"No." Tazri gasped, her mind whirling. She felt betrayed, by Vorik and herself.

How could you not choose me as your successor?

Why could I not figure out how to be the person I was? How could I let you down, over and over?

Both thoughts hit her simultaneously. Vorik had continued speaking, but she could not parse any of his words in her tumult. Automatically her mouth worked independent from her mind, carrying on a token display of resistance while she crumbled inside in grief and anger.

He's dying. He's dying and soon he will be gone. And then what will you have? Whom will you love?

And then, Zendikar will follow. Vorik will die. Zendikar will die. The only person who will not die is you. You died a long time ago. Soon everything will be empty and void, just like you.

The horrifying thought warmed her, filling her emptiness, if only for a moment.

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Art by Daarken

Tazri screamed as reality crumbled. Each memory, no, the actual living of her past was being experienced now, all moments occurring simultaneously, a kaleidoscopic display infinitely unfolding. The halo around her neck, the angel's halo, was now a candescent white, and the heat burned. Even as her mind sought refuge from the flickering onslaught of the past, it was assaulted by the future...

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Tazri smiled widely as her master held Gideon in the clench of his fist. Gideon screamed, and a golden shield flickered into existence briefly around him before failing. Her master was the lord of time and space, and he would not permit such improprieties.

Art by Yefim Kligerman

The corpses of the other interlopers lay nearby. Here they had decided to make their final stand, and the stand was brief and laughable. There were the ashy remains of the fire mage, burning herself out in a futile attempt to harm Tazri's master. There was the drained husk of the elf, who had sought to meld her essence with the world and shared the world's fate as a result. And there was the mutilated corpse of the mind mage. He had conjured up hundreds of illusions as his final trick, and could only watch in horror as his own illusions turned on him, wielding their illusionary swords and puncturing his body through and through. As each one struck they spoke the name, "Kozilek."

Kozilek. The name filled her mind, filled her emptiness, had finally made her complete. She could barely recall the shimmering translucent wave that had hit her, that had killed all her false friends but left her alive, remembering nothing. All she had known as she regained consciousness was the name pealing like the sweetest bells in her mind. Kozilek. Kozilek. Kozilek. Everything had become so clear. She had fought for Kozilek and watched as her master's army had swept before them, culminating in this victorious day.

Art by Lius Lasahido

Ulamog and his ilk were nowhere to be found. Perhaps they had been slain or departed; it mattered not. All that remained on the battlefield were the loyal armies of her master. And the last enemy. The last foreign invader to be eliminated, Gideon Jura.

She had not liked Gideon Jura in her previous life, before Kozilek had saved her. But there was even more reason to hate him now. The mere presence of his opposition offended. How could such a puny, frail vessel have the temerity to challenge the lord of reality himself? Gideon Jura needed to be punished.

Kozilek squeezed, and no mortal frame could withstand such pressure. Gideon Jura burst, and a bloody bag of ruptured flesh and broken bones fell limply to the ash-white earth below, there to join the corpses of his friends. Tazri cheered and leaped, ecstatic to be witness to such glory.

A strange thrumming grew in Tazri's ears. It was not coming from the air, or through the ground. It was coming from inside her. The thrumming grew and deepened, and only gradually did Tazri guess at the sound.

It sounded like laughter. The laughter of Kozilek.

The thrumming resonated throughout the sphere. Tazri shared in her master's joy, but could not perceive the cause of such mirth. Kozilek raised an arm, and there was a ripple in space, and Gideon Jura appeared once more before them, whole and resurrected. He was once more clenched in Kozilek's fist, but in his terror and screams it was apparent that Gideon Jura remembered. Remembered dying, and now he was to die again. Kozilek squeezed and Gideon Jura once more found the embrace of death.

Tazri squealed in delight. Now she understood her master's mirth. Her master wielded time and space. What consequence to manipulate a small part of such materials to ensure an impudent enemy be made to suffer? Again, and again, and again.

Another twitch, another ripple, and Gideon Jura was reborn again, and his terrified cries were delicious.

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The storm raged. Fractal bismuth clouds burst charmed hedrons, while strangularities drizzled onto top-heavy asymmetries.

It wasn't working. None of it was working.

For the first ten thousand years after Kozilek's disappearance, Tazri had used her new powers to attempt the reconstruction. But Kozilek was a poor creator, nothing like his eldest sibling, and Tazri's gifts were a pale, stunted imitation of her master's.

At first she thought it was just a problem of talent, of improvement. Of course she couldn't re-create every detail of Zendikar the first time. It was impossible. But the hundredth time? The thousandth? If she kept improving each time, eventually, inevitably, she would create Zendikar, perfectly, utterly.

Art by Raymond Swanland

And then he would come back. Zendikar re-formed would call to him, just like it did the first time. It had to.

It would just take time, and all the time there was was for her.

Eventually she came to realize the flaw in her logic. She was still too human, even after millennia. While she had undergone major transformations of body and mind during Kozilek's glorious reign, too much of her remained flawed, weak. In the wake of Kozilek's disappearance, her power and control was immense, all the strata of automatons were hers to control. But of course she couldn't achieve her quest with her will alone...she was human.

Humans should never aspire to ambitions of the gods.

Art by Chase Stone

But what if instead of seeking to direct the change, she merely provided the right environment for change? If she could just provide the right starting conditions, then eventually the materials would form into the right Zendikar, perhaps just the way the original Zendikar formed.

Again, all it should take was time.

Her latest obsession was with weather. But even her simplest experimentations did nothing like she expected. And any foray she made into more complex systems quickly spiraled into chaotic randomness. There were no patterns, no beauty, no chance of Zendikar reappearing.

She took a deep breath why are you are still so human, stop breathing, you don't need to breathe and went back to work.

She wanted him back. Why did you leave me? Was I not a good soldier? We had won. Where are you now? Do you miss me? She wanted his laughter again, his comforting presence. She wanted her emptiness to once more be filled. She would keep on trying, keep on improving, keep on understanding. She turned her face to the strange rain, feeling it fall on her simulated cheeks.

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The stars and sun were long black and dead, and nothing moved nor stirred.

Tazri lay deep in the earth, wrapped in cocoons of energy and pattern. She had stored all the energy she could billions of years ago, determined to wait as long as she could.

Kozilek would come back. This she knew. She just had to be there when he did.

Most of the time she slept, but she needed to wake for periods of time to readjust her cocoons and make sure she did not perish during her next long sleep. She needed to conserve all the energy she could; to keep entertained, she told herself stories. Eventually she settled on her favorite story: the day Gideon died.

She would tell the story over and over, lingering on the deaths of each outsider, and then each and every death Gideon suffered on that near-endless day.

The story took so, so long to tell, and when she was done she would tell it again. Each time she said the words she would remember the warmth of Kozilek's laugh, how complete his presence made her feel.

Though she had not seen him for trillions of years, she knew she would. And then all would be right.

And in the void between, she had her sleep and her stories. They were all she needed until Kozilek returned.

"This is the story of the day Gideon died."

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Tazri's mind was disintegrating under the pressure. What mortal could withstand a glimpse of infinity? A part of her, deep inside her ravaged mind, wondered how she had not already crumbled, surrendered to the vast void.

The glow of the angel's halo brightened.

There was something...soothing in that glow. Something buffering the horror, a salve removing the bitterest stings of insanity. But for the warmth and power of the angel's halo, she would have plunged into the gibbering abyss from which there was no return.

The halo around her neck pulsed and thickened, its light shining ever brighter, a near-infinite whiteness to fill the void.

The white light flashed, and the rest of the world disappeared.

Tazri stood? Floated? Existed. Existed in a featureless white plane. All her soldiers, all the Eldrazi, all Zendikar, all were gone.

Memories retreated from her mind. There had been a future, something...horrific. Like a fever dream from which there was no return, dark, never-ending, and terror throughout. She tried to hold on to the dream, but it disintegrated as she sought its reclamation. She was relieved at the loss.

A small part of the endless white in front of her wrinkled, coalesced. She saw a face first, a perfect face, and then below the face a body formed with arms and legs and four wondrous wings, two on a side, unfurled and wide.

Art by Josu Hernaiz

It was the angel she had killed twenty years ago. An infinity ago, some errant thought whispered. To her great surprise, Tazri started crying.

"Where am I? How is..." she gestured around at the expanse of white, "any of this possible?"

The angel smiled, and Tazri basked in its glow. More horror and memories receded from her brain, melting away in the warmth and love of that smile. Though neither the angel's face nor lips moved, Tazri heard a gentle voice in her mind.

"We are outside of time, Tazri. Outside of the domain of Kozilek. In the throes of Kozilek's field, for you all time was compressed to now. It was just the shortest motion to come outside of now, to be free of time. You are safe here."

At the mention of the word Kozilek, Tazri flinched, though she could no longer remember why. The name struck a chord in her, a ringing of dark bells that thrummed not just through her head but through her entire body, the deepest parts of her bones. She could not tell whether the feeling was great horror or great delight.

It was both. An abyss threatened to open up again before her, one into which she could plunge and never return...

The angel's face was once more in front of her, smiling, bringing her back to herself.

"You have been gravely injured, Tazri, for many years. It is time for you to be restored, past time."

She remembered her crime. She was plunging the sword into the angel, delivering death to a creature of such purity and beauty—how could that not be punished?

"You should be healed..."

"No!" The ferocity of Tazri's response took her by surprise. When was the last time she had felt anything so clearly, so strongly? So purely.

"The sacrifice was mine to give! You told me there were consequences, and I did it anyway. I paid the price, and I paid it willingly! You cannot take that away from me!" The immensity of what Tazri had lost these twenty years became fully realized. Never to know confidence, or desire, or joy. Never to be fully engaged in the present, striving toward a better future. Never to know hope.

She had lost so much. It was my choice to make!

"Tazri, you have suffered for an eternity. You have suffered enough. You are forgiven."

"I don't need your forgiveness!" Tazri snarled.

"Not my forgiveness. Yours."

Twenty years ago, Tazri had killed an angel and something had broken inside. Now something was connecting. Re-forming. Becoming whole. Tears flowed freely from Tazri, and more than tears—all the emotions dormant for years rushed back. She buckled under the onslaught. How can I survive this? A pause, and then, You have survived through much worse. She took strength from the confidence in that voice, only slowly realizing the voice was hers.

"Kozilek's field is passing through you, Tazri. Time will resume. You will resume."

Art by Magali Villeneuve

Reality was starting to intrude in the white space of Tazri's mind. Kozilek. Ulamog. The titans freed and running amok. Gideon and his friends lost or dead. How could Zendikar win? How could Zendikar survive?

"Kozilek can influence time and space, Tazri. This is true. This is its purpose. But time and space are merely two dimensions in all the panoply of what is."

The voice was starting to fade, as was the white light pervading her senses. Reality, true reality, was beginning to appear on the outskirts of her perception.

"I don't understand. Please, help me."

"Kozilek, for all his power, for all his dominion, could never do what you did twenty years ago. Such dimensions are unmasterable, unknowable, by him and his ilk. But not by you. You, who loved. You, who sacrificed so much for a sentient being you never knew. You, who had mercy for a dying angel and were willing to pay the price. Time and space are meager domains compared to the kingdoms of love and mercy." The voice was merely a whisper now, and the whiteness reduced to a small sphere around them. The form of the angel was dissipating.

"You will not remember much from your interlude here. You cannot and still remain whole. But remember this. You can win. You will win. There is no other option." And then that beautiful voice was gone, and reality reasserted itself with rolling thunder and flame.

Lightning and fire struck from the skies into hordes of Eldrazi surrounding the ruined dam of Sea Gate. Everywhere Tazri looked she saw dead friends, corpses that a second ago were alive and running; now they were strewn like debris in the wake of a storm. Tazri couldn't understand what had happened. She had been running away from catastrophe, and turned to see the dread figure of Kozilek...and then there was a blank space, a momentary blink, and now her soldiers were dead, and only she was alive. She scanned for Kozilek, but he was already far in the distance walking away from them, as if he had somehow teleported a great distance in an instant.

Art by Igor Kieryluk

The fire and lightning were joined by ambuscades of earth, rising up out of once-even ground to crush and pulverize Eldrazi. Tazri saw four figures behind her, with the lead figure a familiar merfolk. Noyan Dar. Noyan raised his arms and wind-funneled fire swept from surrounding infernos, channeled into incinerating blasts against large Eldrazi. One of the large Eldrazi twitched and a shimmering field interposed between itself and the earth's fury. The sweeping earth and fire disappeared into the shimmering field only to reappear from another shimmering gateway that sprang into existence behind Noyan and his roilmages. Tazri didn't have time to shout a warning as the fire and earth swept through the roilmages, obliterating them.

Art by Daarken

Obliterating them all except one. A spur of rock and earth launched up from the carnage, carrying Noyan Dar with it. It catapulted him hundreds of feet into the air, and despite his prodigious powers, Tazri could not imagine anything but a fatal end to his flight. He plummeted, flailing, attempting to weave a final spell, when a dark figure swooped in and intercepted his flight close to the ground.

With the dark figure came hundreds more, waves of troops flying and running, slaughtering Eldrazi spawn in scores. Tazri could make out the terrifying figures of vampires, but also humans, kor, elves, and merfolk. She saw Munda and several others she recognized. And the flying figure who had saved Noyan was...

Art by Mike Bierek

Drana. Tazri had never liked the vampire queen. Cold, imperious, her presence reminded Tazri of a crocodile. Calm and placid until it was all teeth and aggression and you were dead. Tazri did not trust Drana, but she was ecstatic the vampire lord was here now. Drana dropped Noyan onto the ground and landed in front of Tazri. The anger on both their faces was plain, but there was something different there, too.

They both were uncertain, hesitant. Kozilek. Kozilek upsets all equilibrium. Tazri couldn't imagine anyone else being struck by the same shimmering wave that had struck her. Otherwise they would be dead, presumably in some horrific way, though Tazri still could not fathom how she had survived, or why she couldn't remember anything about the experience. But one didn't need to have been directly in the wake of Kozilek to feel its effect. All of reality trembled before Kozilek.

The arrival of Drana's and Munda's troops had temporarily turned the tide of battle. For the first time since Ulamog had broken his chains, the Zendikari were not beset by Eldrazi horrors. But the situation was still dire. They were nearly surrounded, and more than half of them had already perished. Without a clear plan, one in ten would be lucky to survive. Then Zendikar would be truly lost. Amidst this chaos and loss, someone needed to take charge.

There was a brief moment of doubt. Who am I to be that leader? And then the doubting voice was silent, replaced by a voice twenty years gone, but intimately familiar despite all that time. I am Tazri. I have bled and battled for Zendikar. I have trained under Vorik for fifteen years, learning the shape and sweep of high command. I am here for my people and my land. I am Tazri, and that is enough.

Somewhere deep in her mind echoed the sound of a sweet, pure voice, and Tazri felt giddy as she assumed command.

"Drana, how many people do you have left?"

Drana looked at her and said nothing, either still stunned at the events of today, or unwilling to acknowledge Tazri's lead. Perhaps both.

"Drana!" Tazri's voice lashed out, without anger, but with clear imperious command. Drana's eyes narrowed, and a hint of a predatory smile returned, but she answered. "A thousand. Strong warriors, but fighting Kozilek spawn is not easy. Power and strength alone are not...sufficient." That same haunted look appeared in Drana's eyes again, though the unnerving smile did not leave her face.

"Noyan, how many roilmages are there?" If Drana looked uncomfortable, then the powerful mage Noyan Dar looked truly lost. "They...they are dead. Almost all of them. And the ones who survive cannot do much. I..." Noyan Dar broke down sobbing. Tazri wanted to cry with him, to mourn all the dead, but the living needed a different response.

"Noyan, you cannot do anything for them now. I promise you vengeance for the dead and hope for the living. Noyan!" Noyan looked up.

"Yes, Tazri. Yes. What do you need from me?" Noyan's grief was replaced by anger. Anger and purpose. Perfect.

"I need a rift, a big rift between us and the Eldrazi swarming around Sea Gate. Everyone still at Sea Gate is either dead or dying. We can't do anything for them. But there are still thousands of us here."

"Yes, I can do this. But I will need time, especially doing it alone."

"You won't be alone, but get started. Munda, prepare the troops. We are getting out of here. If they can't move, we're leaving them."

Munda did not hide his anger or anguish. "You cannot..."

Art by Matt Stewart

"I can. I will. If we stay here, we die. The gravely injured face the same fate no matter what we do. We need to live. Zendikar's only hope rests with us." Munda stopped, peering closely at her. He was unused to a forceful Tazri. But he had served alongside her. He knew her. He nodded and went off to prepare everyone else.

"Drana!" The vampire queen had been giving her own orders to her vampires, but she slowly turned, smiling languidly the entire time.

"Send flying scouts and see if there are any large groups of capable fighters still left. And be on the lookout for Gideon. We need him and the others back."

"Bah. The warrior is dead. Or will be soon." Drana's voice dripped with scorn.

"No, he's alive. And we will find him." Several soldiers around her perked up, hope flaring in their eyes where before had been despair. Tazri was amazed at how confident she was. But she was certain Gideon was alive. She needed Gideon for them to have a reasonable chance of winning this war. Therefore, Gideon was alive. The logic would have struck her as bizarre and faulty just yesterday. Irrational confidence is the greatest gift a leader can give her people.

"Get those scouts moving, Drana."

"My my, such the little general. Yes, General Tazri, but of course! One question, though...why should I listen? If I wanted to listen to random opinions, I promise I find mine the most compelling."

General Tazri...said in scorn, but Tazri admitted she liked the sound of it. Time to roll the dice. She approached Drana close, put her lips to the vampire's ear, and whispered.

"You are more powerful than I am, Drana. More powerful than probably all of us." Drana's smile turned coy. "Your people talk, Drana. We know what you did, what you can do. But you know while the vampires of Guul Draz follow you, the rest of Zendikar never will. There's too much fear of vampires. Too much fear of you. So I will lead. Think of me as a figurehead if you want. We can kill each other later, once all the Eldrazi are dead. But until the Eldrazi are dead, I am going to lead this army. I need your help, though. Zendikar needs your help. Please." Tazri realized she was holding her breath in, and slowly released it. No more fear. Not ever again.

Drana moved away from Tazri and stared at her, her smile gone. In Drana's eyes Tazri felt the presence of something ancient and alien, an intimidating look that would have had her on her knees in terror an hour ago. I have lived for an eternity, little vampire. Your brief interlude of existence is the merest morning dew. Tazri didn't know where the thought came from, didn't even understand what it meant, but the thought comforted her, and she smiled.

Drana's face grew uneasy, and she looked away.

When Drana looked back, she was all smugness and superiority again, her wicked smile once more in full display. But Tazri knew it was an act. Time to push.

"One more thing, Drana. I need you to funnel energy to Noyan Dar. He doesn't have any roilmages to help him, so you need to be his energy source. I need you to make it happen."

Tazri could feel the anger from Drana, could see reality unfolding in many different ways, some of them quite short and bloody ends for herself. But she focused on the outcome she wanted, the outcome she needed.

After a long pause, when Drana said simply, "As you command, General Tazri," both of them knew Drana meant it. At least for now.

The Eldrazi were beginning to mass again along the Sea Gate front. Although both Ulamog and Kozilek were occupied elsewhere, there were enough spawn here to make life increasingly difficult. "Noyan! I need that spell now!"

Ulamog and Kozilek loose and rampant. Half of the Zendikari army destroyed. Gideon's whereabouts unknown. And Tazri had lost near half of her life in a dormant fog that only today had been lifted, all due to an act of mercy that had cost her near everything.

Tazri thought about all of it, and discarded it. This is where I want to be. This is what I was meant to do.

The battle for Zendikar had not been lost. The battle for Zendikar was now truly beginning. And Zendikar was going to win. She heard the beautiful voice of an angel sing, and General Tazri smiled.

Art by Chris Rahn

5

Up In Flames

By Doug Beyer

Chandra Nalaar arrived on Zendikar just as all hell was breaking loose. The demon Ob Nixilis had regained his Planeswalker spark, awakened a titan, and caused the destruction of Sea Gate. Now two Eldrazi titans roam free on Zendikar, and the Zendikari are scattered. Chandra is committed to reuniting with her compatriots, but in all the chaos, she has yet to locate them—or the vengeful demon.

Chandra scrambled up a rock outcropping, looking for two particular faces, but she saw only destruction and retreat. Kozilek and Ulamog were wandering the landscape now, cutting two ravines of blighted land behind them. They didn't flinch at her blasts of fire, but she got the sense that they would simply turn and devour her if she made a big enough nuisance of herself.

Swaths of corruption crisscrossed the battlefield, marking the travels of spawn. Eldrazi broodlings were running out of humanoids to chase. Many of the Zendikari had fled when Kozilek rose and the sea wall broke. Many had been consumed. There was no sign of the faces Chandra sought.

There was also no sign of the demon whose interference led to all of this.

"Gideon?" she shouted once, twice, three times. Louder each time, with a growing edge in her voice.

A chittering-crackling sound announced a fresh swarm of Eldrazi skittering over a hill toward her. They would be here soon. Too many to take on by herself.

She closed her eyes like fists and thought, "Jace?" as loudly as she could. She instantly felt ridiculous.

There was no reply, mental or otherwise.

Chandra narrowed her eyes at the oncoming swarm. They had too many knees and elbows, with unblinking eyes positioned at the joints. She glanced behind her, but the land dropped away into a glimmering valley of Eldrazi-ruined ground. She stood tall, feet spaced wide, in front of the swarm. She snapped her goggles down over her eyes and tilted her head to one side so that her neck cracked.

As she took her stance, her foot tapped something metal, and she glanced down. It was a large buckler shield, wedged in a depression of mud. She cast a glare at the line of Eldrazi, and deliberately bent down and picked up the shield without breaking eye contact. It was dented, but she recognized it.

Art by James Ryman

She swallowed hard. She pressed the shield against her forehead for a moment, and something prickled in her throat. She squeezed the metal buckler in her fists until the edges crinkled.

For some reason the faces of her parents flashed in her head. She never understood why she would think of them at odd times—they just came to her. They never aged in her mind; they were still the same age as when she saw them last, when she was still a child on Kaladesh. She didn't think of their last moments; she didn't see her father falling to his knees with a knife in his gut, and she didn't see her mother's shawl in the mud, its edges burned as the village burned around it. She just saw them looking at her with parents' eyes, kindly and proud.

She gnashed her teeth. She had come to Zendikar entirely too late.

A woman's voice came from behind her, down in the ravine. "Hey, fire mage."

She turned.

"Is that the Commander-General's?" A tall, plate-armored woman crouched in the ditch of Kozilek's corruption. Pressed against the wall beside her were a small party of Zendikari—mostly scouts and foot soldiers, many of them wounded.

Art by Chris Rahn

Chandra eyed the encroaching swarm again, watching them skitter slowly toward her. She slipped down into the ravine and held up the shield. "It's Gideon's. Did you see what happened to him?"

"He was battling the demon," the woman said. "He went down, hard."

Chandra's shoulders dropped.

"But he's alive," the woman added.

"General Tazri—" one of the scouts began.

"He's alive," she repeated.

"General Tazri," Chandra said, "it's urgent I find him."

"We need him too," Tazri said. She tore a strip of bandage with her teeth, and wrapped it around the leg of one kor scout, then tugged it taut. "The demon took him, and two others."

"Took him? Where?"

"He was heading toward a cavern," said another one of the scouts. His eyes and fangs marked him as a vampire. He pointed in the direction of some rocky bluffs in the distance. "The mouth is there, in the cleft between those two peaks. Only a handful of miles, by air."

"Thank you," Chandra said. She tucked the buckler onto her arm and grabbed hold of the shimmering minerals to climb out of the ravine.

"Wait," Tazri said. She tilted her head toward her group. "I have wounded. We're in no shape to lead a rescue party now."

Chandra wondered what exactly that had to do with her. "I'm going to him. Stay here."

"What about the swarm?" Tazri asked.

Chandra peeked her head out of the ravine. The Eldrazi were still making a direct line for them. "I'll lead them away."

Tazri looked Chandra up and down, frowning. Then she produced a heavy mace and nodded. "We'll cover your exit. Thank you."

"Just stay down, and stay safe."

Chandra clambered up out of the ravine. She stood up, dusted herself off, and ignited all at once.

Her hair blazed to life, and her hands glowed hot. A muscle-tensing, punch-throwing anger warmed her limbs. The anger was familiar, comforting, and she leaned into it like a dependable friend. Chandra twirled her body, and in her spinning, the air around her caught fire. A roaring cyclone made of churning flame whirled across the field ahead of her, and she chased it as it tore through the swarm of Eldrazi. Eldrazi parts flew high into the air, and bits flopped down onto the ground, smoking.

The swarm of Eldrazi made a harsh fizzing sound, and refolded themselves to orient themselves toward her, rather than toward Tazri's soldiers. Her pulse quickened. Her hair burned hotter.

"That's right," Chandra said. "I'm a glorious beacon of mana and light, you bastards."

She turned toward the bluffs. As she ran, the flame of her hair streaked behind her like a banner.

She vaulted over crags and hopped small fissures, checking behind her without stopping. From here she could see that Kozilek's spawn carried devastation along with their general unsettling grossness. A wake of ruin spread out behind the swarm, with abnormal quadrangular patterns where the living land of Zendikar used to be.

Art by Jason Felix

She stayed hot and ran on, throwing blasts of fire behind her in furious jets. Occasionally she spun, hurling a barrage of fire, taking out one or two more of the Eldrazi and goading on the rest, drawing them away from Tazri's wounded.

After several miles, the swarm was falling behind. She could barely see their hovering black plates in the distance, and she had advanced beyond their grotesque swath on the landscape. Chandra focused on the two peaks ahead.

She reached a crest, and the land fell away, sloping down to a huge cavity in the earth: a cavern's mouth, surrounded by spiky hedrons that all pointed inward, toward the depths of the cave.

As she approached, she saw that the way was blocked. The entrance was entirely covered over with a newly-forged crust, gleaming in square spiral patterns. This was the cavern where the demon had taken them, but the iridescent crust blocked her path.

Chandra's breath caught in her chest. In the twisted surface, she saw a broken reflection. It was not of her own face, though, but of her mother and father. Their eyes were tender. Their mouths moved and they nodded reassuringly, but their faces moved strangely along the planes of the surface, and she couldn't make out what they were saying. She reached toward them, but the image broke into a million angles. Without her permission, her brain turned to thoughts of her mother's burned shawl on the ground outside a Kaladesh village, and of her father's apologetic eyes as he sank to his knees, hands on his stomach to hold the blood in—

She gritted her teeth and pressed her fists into her eye sockets. When she unclenched and opened her eyes, the only thing she saw reflected in the spirals was herself, ringed in fire, her eyes two hot coals. She turned back to the barrier. She glanced at her hands. They were not child's hands, like they had been when her parents died, when her Planeswalker spark first ignited. They were the weapons of a pyromancer. She clutched her hands together, interweaving the fingers to form a single fist. She raised her arms, gathering a white-hot ball of fire around her hands. She said nothing as she faced the distorted spirals and smashed at her own reflection.

The crust exploded. A cloud of fragments and clods of earth rained down. She had intended to punch a hole just large enough for her own ingress, but instead she had crumbled the entire barrier, leaving the cavern mouth open wide.

Inside, the cavern was etched with more of the patterns of ruin. The bowels of the earth here had been scoured, depleted, transformed.

Chandra remembered the demon calling the titan Kozilek to rise, laughing coldly at the armies below him, laughing at this entire world. She knew Kozilek wasn't here. This was the lair of a demon.

Art by Jason Rainville

Chandra kept anger close as she climbed and descended through meandering passages. The spiral-etched ruins around her shimmered weirdly in the light of her fire.

She could hear a deep, unhurried voice intoning in the chamber ahead. "...lifetimes of agony on this wretched world," the voice was saying. "I've far less time to share with you, but I assure you, no less pain."

When she emerged into the chamber, she saw the three of them hanging in midair, suspended by magic like limp marionettes: Gideon, his chin dropped onto his chest, with lines of agony creasing his forehead. Jace, his head lolled to one side, his hood shrouding his face. And an elf woman, her braid and arms hanging limp, her eyelids parted to reveal slitted, unseeing, green-on-green eyes, with a tear streaked down her cheek to her chin. Their bodies dangled there in air, surrounded by coils of enervating magic. Three or four Eldrazi drones of Kozilek's lineage chittered nearby, not even turning their bladelike projections to notice her.

Art by Ryan Barger

"I'm sorry, did you get the impression you were invited?" The demon, the source of the deep, echoing voice, emerged from a side passage. His body looked like raw black tendon had melded with fragments of armor, with a hellish internal heat showing through at the seams. His eyes were aglow with hate and amused interest somehow at once.

"I'm inviting myself," Chandra said. "Free them or die."

"I wasn't aware they had a sidekick," said the demon.

Chandra curled her fingers into a fist, and threw herself and her magic at her foe. The demon deflected her fiery blow with his forearm, raising tattered wings like a dragon. He smiled or grimaced, showing ranks of sharp teeth.

Chandra recovered from the deflection. She pivoted, whirled, and lobbed a volley of darts of fire at the demon's eye.

The demon shielded his face with a wing, shrugging off the worst of it, but he grunted with the effort. He swiveled on one foot and backhanded Chandra with his claw.

Chandra slammed against the wall, knocking her skull against stone. She coughed, doubled over and struggling for breath. Nearby, the Eldrazi drones flexed their pincers, but did not advance toward her.

She spat blood and regained her stance. She forced her fire to grow larger, letting the pain feed her magic. Her hands extended into long whips of fire. She drew back her arm, gathering up anger. The crackling heat of her fist distorted the cavern air.

She leaped, lashing out with two quick blasts of fire. Deflected.

She continued her leap into a physical attack, swinging down with Gideon's buckler as a blunt weapon. Clanged off of the demon's pauldron.

She recovered to one side and spun. Two more blasts from her knuckles, and a whoosh of flame shot forth from both palms. Caught in the demon's claw, and crushed to nothing.

He swung at her, and although she dodged her head out of the path of his claw, she still felt piercing pain raking across her face.

She gasped as the skin of her face stung like acid. Her fire flickered, and she shook her hands as if to shake more fire into them.

No! Stay lit. Burn him to cinders. Pain is fuel.

She brought her fists close to her chest, collecting all of her fire together at her core. She blasted everything she had at him, not a single flash but a sustained torrent of fire, all of her rage pressurized and forced into a cone of boiling air—

WHOOOOSH—

The demon walked through her spell toward her. The fire charred his chest, but he raised his arm and grabbed Chandra under the chin, raising her up by the throat.

—GLURK.

Chandra's spell broke. She struggled, grabbing at his claw, prying at the fingers. "Bastard," she choked out.

The demon was smiling, fangs bright. "Nothing so far has managed to stop me, little candle. And it's not going to be you."

She wrestled his fingers loose, and bit through the skin of his hand. He dropped her and she collapsed onto her hands and knees. She forced herself to lift her head. "It's going to be me," she muttered. She willed her legs to stand her back up, but one leg just trembled instead of complying.

The demon tilted his head in mock concern. "But you're burning so quickly, little candle. What happens when you sputter out?" He summoned a spell and shoved it forward with a claw.

Chandra's body twisted as the demon's magic tore at her. It felt like erosion, like years of time tearing at a mountainside, but accelerated into a horrid moment. She felt enervated, as if a lifelong, debilitating illness had gripped her all at once. Her limbs weighed a ton each.

Chandra's head wanted very desperately to dip down, to make contact with the stone floor. But she did not let it. Her arms shook, holding her body up like brittle columns. Her vision swam, and the cavern became vague shapes and shadows.

The cavern grew darker. She could feel herself flickering, dimming by degrees. She was going out.

NO. STAY LIT.

She concentrated on her hands, the palms ground into the cavern grit. If her hands didn't go out, she still had life in her. Weapons of a pyromancer.

She sensed the demon come quite close to her, a dark blob by her ear. "Are you supposed to be the rescuer?" There was a tsking sound. "But—I don't understand. What good would you be to anyone?"

Chandra demanded her eyes stay open, that her head stay upright. Her muscles shuddered with effort.

"And now I have to punish you, as well. I wouldn't have wanted this. But my hand is forced. Lie down."

Chandra slowly turned her face toward him. She could barely see through wet lashes, through her clouded vision.

His splotch of a face altered, became kindly. Became familiar.

"Chandra, honey," said the vague face, in her father's voice. The voice had her father's kindness, his warmth, his steady patience.

She didn't want this. She didn't ask to see him. Not now.

"Give up, my Chandra," he said. Chandra winced. "You've done enough. Lie down. Lie down on the ground."

Chandra squinted at the shapes of her father's dim face. Gravity pressed down on every square inch of her, sapping her rebellion. Her eyes brimmed.

"Chandra, my dear daughter," said the face, now in her mother's voice, her mother's loving, iron-strong voice. "You've done enough. You've failed them, Chandra. Give up now. Fall onto the ground." Chandra shuddered. Her elbows bowed. "You've failed them, Chandra. Just like you failed us."

Chandra's body wanted to exhale, wanted to cough her life out of her chest, wanted to let go. She wanted to sneer at the face, to mutter a string of curse words at it, but she couldn't summon the strength. The world closed in.

The cavern, the face, everything went dark. Her mother's face disappeared, and she could only see streaks of the demon's disembodied, hellish eyes in the gloom.

Her fire was out. Her hands were extinguished. She could feel her hair hanging down around her face, clammy with sweat.

"Chandra, the...dr..." said the voice. It had a weird echo now, not like a whisper in her ear—it was, somehow, even closer than that. "The dr...oans, Chhhandra."

"Don't take your defeat personally," said the demon, his voice now undistorted, with its usual callous edge. "I tend to bring out the weakest in people."

"Chandra. Hizzz...his Eldr...azi drones," said the echoing voice. It sounded like a headache. It also sounded distinctly not like her parents. "Blassst the. Drones."

Jace. Jace was—conscious!

"With ffff," Jace slurred in her mind. "Ffffi. Fiiiyer."

Jace was—somewhat conscious!

"I can't," Chandra thought dully.

"You damned..." Jace was struggling to form the words in her head as much as she struggled to absorb them. "You damned well c-can. Get up."

"Don't," Chandra said aloud. Her actual voice sounded odd to her own ears. Blunted. She was probably drooling.

"What's that now?" the demon asked. "Please don't tell me you're about to plead for a stay of execution. It insults us both."

"Don't...tell me," she croaked. Her hands became fists, and her fists became fire, illuminating the chamber again. "Don't tell me," she repeated, stumbling to her feet, swaying.

The figure of the demon swam before her. She could see the amusement in the way he shook his head just slightly, and the malice in the way he summoned one final, dark knot of energy in one claw. "Lie down, little candle," he said.

"Don't...tell me. What. TO DO."

Chandra lurched forward with her fists. The demon merely tilted his head to avoid the assault. But her hail of fiery missiles arced toward their intended targets, slamming into the Eldrazi drones that lurked near her friends. The drones convulsed as they burned, their skin crackling as miniature suns consumed them.

Art by Svetlin Velinov

Gideon, Jace, and the elf collapsed to the floor in a heap. And then they disappeared.

The demon snarled at the disruption of the imprisonment spell, and the vanishing of his prey. He turned back to Chandra and reared back to loose his deathblow.

Chandra winced, unable to summon the strength to dodge, or even collapse. But when she was still alive a heartbeat later, she glanced at the demon. He was staring around, speaking dark words in a growing fit of fury.

"You've invisible, as far as he can see," said Jace's voice in her head. "For now."

Chandra staggered away, leaning against the cavern wall as the demon searched for them.

"The others. Are they alive?" Chandra asked in her mind.

"Barely."

"We'll have to take him on. On my signal. Ready?"

"No! We are nowhere near ready. We don't have much left in us."

Chandra made fists. "How long before he figures out we're still here? We can do this."

"Chandra. We've been—tormented. For...I don't know how long. Felt...long."

Chandra didn't like the uncertainty in Jace's thoughts, the frank admission of pain. The demon was kicking and stomping over the cavern floor. He couldn't see them, but there was no way he was fooled into thinking they had disappeared for good.

Chandra squared her shoulders. Fire flickered from her fingertips, growing into palm-sized spheres of heat. "All the more reason to take him down."

Jace's hesitating reply: "They need rest."

"Jace. We came here to do a job. That job's not done. Is it."

"Chandra—" Jace thought at her.

Chandra's fire grew. "Is it?"

"Chandra, I can't—"

The others reappeared in a flash, the concealment spell broken. Jace and the elf woman had moved further back in the chamber from where Chandra had seen them last. They looked conscious but weak.

Gideon had reappeared too. The demon already had him by the neck, raising him up off his feet.

"Gideon!"

The demon turned to face Chandra and grinned wide, a thudding laugh rising from deep within him. The sound held the built-up malice of being trapped on Zendikar for eons—and the satisfaction of finally being repaid for it.

"Your friends should thank you, little candle," said the demon. "Not for giving them hope—that was, in fact, quite cruel of you. But no, without you, they would have had no audience for their deaths." The demon squeezed on Gideon's throat, and Chandra could hear bone cracking.

Chandra couldn't budge. She knew any step she might take would just hasten Gideon's demise.

But she saw that Gideon was struggling. His hands clamped onto the demon's, trying to break free, and even in his weary state, sparks of light protected his flesh. She saw Jace's eyes glow with azure smoke, conjuring some mind-piercing spell even as he fought to remain standing. And she saw the elf woman's hair blow back as she summoned up desperate magic. Vines of mana twisted out of the ground and flowed into her.

I haven't failed them. We haven't failed each other.

Chandra stomped on the ground, and a streak of fire raced along from her foot to the demon, setting the cavern floor on fire beneath his feet. Gideon elbowed the demon's arms and kicked at his chest, wresting himself free and rolling away just as fire engulfed the demon.

The demon emerged surrounded. Gideon now wielded his sural, Jace had a spell at the ready, and the elf's eyes were glimmering with mana.

"All together!" Gideon shouted, and Chandra knew exactly what he meant.

All four of them attacked the demon simultaneously. Flashing whip-blades and elemental vines and punishing mind magic coincided with Chandra's from-the-gut rush of fire.

Art by Svetlin Velinov

The demon grimaced, doubling his wings over himself for protection. He attempted to blast back with a spell, but Jace was too quick for him, and the demon's spell dissolved just as Gideon slashed at him from another direction. He lashed out toward the elf, but Chandra cut him off with a column of flame.

The demon clapped his wings together, buffeting Chandra back against a wall and giving him time to kick Jace in the gut. But Gideon tangled the demon's leg in sural blades and yanked, combining with Nissa's vines to topple him to the ground.

Chandra made eye contact with Gideon as she unstrapped his buckler from her arm, and he nodded. She tossed the shield into the air and Gideon slid it on in one motion, and he elbow-dropped the metal shield onto the prone demon's cranium, just as Chandra melted the metal of his helmet to putty. The crack was audible.

The demon roared and burst back up to his feet, throwing Gideon off of him, wobbling his head slightly. Chandra gathered a barrage of fire to knock him off his feet—but agony surged through her veins.

"Enough," the demon said through his fangs. Chandra's heartbeats were jagged pulses of pain, like her bloodstream had become needles.

Jace became a coterie of four Jaces, each one seemingly drilling into the demon's mind, while Gideon shoulder-rammed into the demon's chest. Chandra felt the elf woman's hand on her arm, and at her touch, Chandra's heart soothed, regaining its natural rhythms.

"Prepare something big," whispered the elf. "We'll tell you when." And she spun to lash at the demon with a swirl of living magic.

Between the multiple illusionary Jaces, the slashing physical prowess of Gideon, and the relentless wild magic of the elf, the demon was doing more dodging than attacking. He grimaced, claws holding his head, using his elbows and wings to minimize incoming attacks while Jace's magic pummeled his mind.

With the demon occupied, Chandra sculpted a tiny fire cyclone out of the air. She spun with it, letting it grow as she fed its fire, building up strength. She was immersed in it, consumed by it, dancing with the hot spiraling winds as part of it.

"Ready?" came Jace's voice in her head.

"Ready!" Chandra shouted aloud.

The others simultaneously dodged out of the way, leaving Chandra a clear shot at the demon. She loosed her cyclone with a shout, and it tore across the chamber, slamming into him and blasting him against the wall.

Chandra's spell dispersed. The demon was charred, smoking, propping his shoulder against the wall of the chamber. His hell-coal eyes looked to each of them, one by one. "Well done," he said. "Well done. You've chosen to spend your efforts to defeat me, and you have. But every moment you've spent on me, you've allowed Zendikar to suffer. So you've still, of course, lost."

Chandra and the others looked at each other.

"I promise you this," the demon said in a low snarl. "I will walk every plane, scour every pathetic world, until I find a way to bring fitting punishment down upon your misguided lives."

The air folded in on itself, swallowing the demon, and he was gone.

Chandra stood with the others. Jace's hair was ruffled boyishly, belying his usual air of mystery. Gideon looked battered, but he had a grin on his face that made his facial hair crooked.

"Knew you'd come," he said.

"But I told you no," Chandra said with a raised eyebrow.

"I knew," Gideon said.

"I'm Nissa," said the elf.

"Chandra," she said, offering her palm.

Nissa clasped Chandra's hand in both of her own. Her fingers were soft, and her green-tinted eyes looked as deep as mossy wells. "Thank you."

They all heard an echoing, scuffling, chittering sound. They turned to look at the passageway that led into the chamber. The Eldrazi swarm, the same horde that Chandra had lured away from Sea Gate, came skittering into the chamber, clambering on every surface.

Chandra looked to the spawn, and back to the others. Four nods. And like a chord played in harmony, four spells crackled to life.

6

Beneath the Surface

By Ari Levitch

The merfolk Jori En watched from the Sea Gate's mighty wall as Kozilek rose from beneath the ground to destroy Ulamog's hedron prison. When the wall itself was destroyed, Jori was tossed into the churning sea. Jori, an accomplished ruin diver, is an expert at getting into and out of dangerous places. That may seem insignificant in the face of the raw power of the Eldrazi, but Jori's skills may prove to be critical if the Zendikari hope to survive.

When Jori En came to, the stench of death was thick in the water, an ambient scent that's source was mysterious but insistent. It was hard to breathe, and Jori's gills strained to extract oxygen. Too cloudy down here. Also dark. The low pressure meant she was close to the surface. Must be night. How long had she been down here? What happened? It was suddenly harder to breathe. She would have to get out of here soon, she knew, but it wasn't the time be hasty—and therefore foolish.

Self-assess. Nothing felt broken. All fingers and toes were where she left them, her left hand still gripping her spear. A good sign.

Beside Jori, a warm glow bloomed in the water where she conjured a small, flickering flame at the core of a large bubble. In the light, she continued her inspection. Bruised and sore but nothing serious, she confirmed.

Art by Igor Kieryluk

She conjured more bubbles, each with their own inner flames, a dozen bobbing lanterns that she sent toward the surface. It was time for answers. In the bubbles' upward course they moved through increasing cloudiness, and ahead of their advance the inky blackness above began to take on dimension. The shape was too large to discern from Jori's position. A kick, and she propelled herself after her floating lights just in time to see them extinguished by a massive serpentine silhouette that broke away from the darkness to wind through the water down toward her.

A tentacle. Jori flinched.

Eldrazi. Her whole body tensed, and her webbed hands worked frantically against the water to reverse course. The tentacle grew closer, and Jori twisted her body and kicked again to avoid it. It was much larger than she anticipated. As it passed, she raised her spear, ready to drive its point into the monster's soft flesh when the thing reoriented in the water. But it never did. Instead, the tentacle simply continued to drift in the current of the water like a colossal strand of kelp that grew down from the ocean's surface. And on it, Jori spotted suckers. This thing was not an Eldrazi, nor did it belong to one. It belonged to an octopus. A horned rift octopus, called here all the way from the Yawning Chasm off the coast of Ondu. And it was dead.

She needed air. The water was too murky, too contaminated with the particles of the dead to yield what she needed. Her gills felt dirty. She wanted to open her lungs and gulp air. And the next thing she knew, she was frantically swimming along the underside of the octopus carcass in a dash to find the surface. How hard could it be? Go up. Just go up. Jori continued her desperate search, but it was so dark. Octopus gave way to kraken carcass, which became some other giant of the sea. A tangle of meat. It didn't matter what it was. To Jori, it was as though the ocean had grown a thick crust over it.

With her spear, Jori probed for any space between the bodies, but something was driving the carcasses together, pressing them in on each other.

Nearby, a whale's corpse began to roll. It dipped in the water, and light broke through the surface to illuminate its frame. Sunlight! The crush of organic debris began closing in immediately to stifle the affirmation of day, but Jori was already in motion.

She broke the surface without grace, and she drew air into her lungs until it hurt. She held it for moment, exhaling slowly as she surveyed her surroundings. The sun was warm, but the world above the surface was as below—a patchwork of carnage, and in the heat of the day there was no respite from the stink in the open air. Toward the sea beyond the bay, the dead went on forever. But in the other direction, the carnage was abbreviated.

Sea Gate.

Jori's eyes settled on the massive, ancient wall of polished white stone that rose out of the water. Or rather, what was left of it. The great lighthouse was toppled, and the wall's surface had been eroded by some geometric, iridescent blight. And all at once, disparate fragments of memory suddenly stitched together to form a terrifying tapestry.

The hedron network had failed. Ulamog was free.

And then Kozilek.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

At that thought, all Jori could see were the looming jagged shadows that adorned the space around the titan's head. Their blackness was so stark that Jori had been struck by their loudness. She had been on the mighty wall, reveling in the Zendikari victory over Ulamog and her own part in that. But it had all came apart so quickly. Kozilek had emerged, undetected, from beneath the ground. The Zendikari could do nothing but watch it happen. Gideon, Nissa, Jace—not even they could mount a defense. Even the denizens of the sea rose against Kozilek, but the titan halted them and broke their greatest champion. He broke Sea Gate, and when he did, Jori was flung into the ocean.

The Eldrazi—all of this—were too much. Or perhaps she was simply too small. Here she was, just another anonymous bit in the slurry that choked the water. What was there to do now? The question weighed on her, pushing on her shoulders and tugging at her ankles. She knew the answer. It tasted bitter on her tongue. Nothing. She refused to swallow it. She couldn't. She had to let it out, so with everything she had, she screamed. She screamed until her face grew hot, until she felt the blood pump in pounding lurches across her temples, until the sound that issued from her mouth was reduced to a scratching rasp. All she had didn't seem like anything, for she felt woefully impotent.

But it was not lost, because a response came. A single word fought its way across the macabre landscape to find her.

"Help."

That was all Jori needed to hear. The way was awkward, but Jori pressed forward in a straight path toward the source of the plea. More than once one of the great carcasses shifted, threatening to pull Jori into the suffocating crush of dead flesh, and she was forced to dash on all fours along the rolling, uneven terrain. Dangerous terrain was nothing new to Jori, who'd spent much of her life getting into and out of perilous places. It's what she did. And she was good at it. But this was different, a truth that was confirmed each time blubbery flesh gave way at the pressure of her hands and feet. Despite all the derelict temples and lost shrines she had raided, this was the only time her actions felt like a desecration.

Jori climbed over a knot of lifeless tentacles. Her feet were searching for some semblance of stability on the pearlescent shell of a kraken when something latched onto her ankle. She jerked her leg back to free herself, but her balance was all wrong and she pitched forward until her helmet stopped hard against the barnacled surface of the shell. Head ringing, she spun onto her back, readying her spear to thwart a follow-up attack. But there was no attack, just a voice: "Jori."

It was odd hearing her name in this surreal scenario. It seemed impossible that there could be anything familiar in all this, but then, so many things that had happened in these last few weeks seemed impossible.

Jori rose on her elbows and stared down past her feet, where she saw another merfolk, blue of skin, lying in a puddle of blood that was diluted by seawater. "Kiora?" Jori asked.

"Help." Her voice sounded strained, but it was strong, and to Jori, it came more as a command than a plea. Jori crawled over. Kiora's breathing was rough, and she had a bloodied hand gripped around her leg, just above the ankle, where it bent at unnatural angle. The leg was clearly broken. And badly.

"What happened?" Jori asked, reaching out to move Kiora's hand aside.

"Cosi won," she replied, as though it were a diagnosis of her pain.

"Your leg, Kiora." Jori reached out and moved Kiora's hand aside. Kiora didn't protest. She didn't seem to notice. But Jori saw bone—the shin bone, she figured. It had split the skin when it broke, and blood oozed out in weak pulses. "We have to set this."

"The bident's gone," Kiora said as she absently examined the blood on her hand. Jori had seen dozens of broken bones; it came with her field. She could handle broken bones. But Kiora was in shock, and that was much more complicated. Not that Jori could blame her, however.

First things first. A splint. Jori braced her spear between two spines that rose up from the kraken's shell, and twisted until the torque snapped the spear at the midpoint. She needed a way to lash the broken spear shaft to Kiora's leg, so she unwound the leather bindings that were used to secure its tip in place.

All the while, Kiora continued in her monotone delirium, "Did it abandon me? Because of Lorthos?"

Jori tucked the spearhead into her belt, then placed one hand just below Kiora's knee and took hold of her leg just above the ankle. "You're going to want to hold on to something." Jori began to pull. As expected, Kiora screamed. At least she had the sense, or experience, not to jerk, Jori thought. That was a good thing. She kept pulling, and the bone began to recede into Kiora's skin.

"Stay with me now. We're almost there," Jori said, more to reassure herself than anything. They had to keep going, she knew. If she let go now, the jagged edge of the bone could saw through more flesh and could easily cause irreparable damage.

Kiora just gritted her teeth, inhaling and exhaling in furious succession until finally, she managed to say "Enough! It's in place."

Slowly, Jori eased her grip. She reached for her splint, but before she could secure it to Kiora's leg, a cluster of green motes fluttered to life around the wound. As they buzzed along the damaged flesh, it began to close.

Kiora's breathing began to slow. "I'll be fine in a moment," she said. It was the first time she seemed to be present in the conversation. The pain of setting a broken bone tended to snap people back to reality.

"Bone and all?" Jori said. She leaned in close to watch Kiora's flesh knit together.

"Uh-huh," Kiora said, massaging her leg.

"That's quite a skill," Jori said. "I learned how to set bones from a guy in Zulaport—Old Zulaport, that is, when it was still on the coast. Anyway, the things I saw there." She bent her arm at the elbow so that her forearm dangled limply. "You wouldn't believe how much abuse the body can ta—"

"The bident's gone," Kiora interrupted.

There was something in the way she said it that needled Jori's anger to life. "So you said."

"And I need to get it back."

"Um, I'm sorry for your loss. Really. But take a look around you, Kiora!" Jori swept her arm out in a large arc. "You'll have to excuse me if I don't give a damn about your bident."

"It's the only hope we've got. You know that. When we were all at the lighthouse, you were the only one who understood its power."

"And it failed," Jori said. They'd all failed. Jace and Nissa failed—Ulamog's prison reduced to a pile of derelict hedrons at the bottom of the sea. Gideon and Tazri failed—their combined forces of Zendikar scattered or dead. And Jori. What could she have done but watch from the sea wall as it happened?

"Kozilek won. That's not the same thing. He freed his brother, and now they are on the loose. So what's your plan? Should we find some deep hole to hide in and wait for the end? So yeah, look around you." It was Kiora's turn indicate the surrounding carnage. "This is what's coming for all of us."

A part of Jori wanted just that—to find some tiny, forgotten place of the world and simply disappear.

"Jori," Kiora continued, "Kozilek's spent his trick. He's exposed. Now we just need to recover the bident. And for that, I need your help." Kiora extended a hand to Jori.

Jori eyed Kiora. "Where is it?" she said after a moment.

"I'll show you."

Jori trailed a bit behind Kiora as the two pushed their way downward through the water. They were swimming toward the spit of land that extended out from the coast to meet Sea Gate at one end. The Planeswalker knew the way, and she led them to a strange current that nudged them along. Jori wasn't sure how she hadn't sensed it earlier, but the closer they drew to it the more it seemed to reach out across the entire bay. It was the source of the churn on the surface. And this, Kiora had explained, was where the god-weapon went when it abandoned her.

Jori didn't know why she had agreed to come along. What she did know was that it was a direction to head in. And if the bident was down there—wherever there was—it was an object that could be found and liberated. This, she understood. And when understanding was as rare as it had been lately, then that was worth something.

Was it the same for Kiora? Jori watched her. She wasn't an elegant swimmer by merfolk standards. But she wasn't ungainly either. She was strong, that much was clear, but it was something else. Jori realized that she'd noticed it first when she met Kiora in the lighthouse of Sea Gate, when all of them were formulating their plan to deal with Ulamog. Certainty. All of her movements were done with certainty—even the kicking of her recently mended leg. It was the same with her words. When Kiora spoke, it was as though the conversation was already over, but she was waiting for everyone else to simply come around. For Kiora, Jori concluded, the bident was a tool for an unfinished task—to depose a god. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Why did Kiora need her, then?

"We're almost there," Kiora said, her eyes fixed forward.

Ahead, a cliff loomed, rising sharply from the ocean floor. The current was in full force now, and it propelled them foward.

"There's an opening in the cliff face. The current should carry us right to it," Kiora said. That explained the current. The seismic disruption that accompanied Kozilek's emergence must have torn a rift in the cliff. The current was pouring water somewhere, and that could explain the bident's wayward path.

Kiora turned her head to face Jori. "Get ready."

Jori thought she was. But then her vision suddenly became pinched, and she was looking at the submerged cliff as though it was some distant thing glimpsed through a spyglass. The current changed, too, and its course bent at odd angles, tossing the two merfolk against unseen barriers. At first Jori threw her arms out to gain some purchase in the water, or at least slow her strange momentum, but it was no use, so she tucked her limbs in keep from dislocating them. All she could do was keep her vision oriented toward the cliff. Focus was everything right now.

And then, reality compressed, and everything sped up until the cliff face filled Jori's vision entirely. She was feet from the opening that Kiora described. But the way was suddenly obstructed where a segmented mass rose up from the depths. Jori first thought it to be one of Kiora's pets, but the thing unfurled to reveal a collection of limbs that reached out to span the width of the opening. Eldrazi. It wasn't a tangle of fleshy tentacles with a bony faceplate like so many of the other ones she'd faced. No, this one had shards of black glass hanging above in perfect symmetry like the titan, Kozilek.

Art by Raymond Swanland

Jori hurtled toward the monster. Several limbs fanned out to intercept her, but she pushed her legs out in front of her, pushed off one of the appendages, and let the current carry her past.

Kiora must have made through as well, for a flash of greenish light to the right caught Jori's eye, and she turned to see the other merfolk reaching back, her hands aglow with green energy. The energy streaked out to the Eldrazi as it turned to give chase. It lurched after them in the water, growing as it did. In a span of seconds, the monster's terrible bulk filled the opening. And then it was too great for the narrow space. It pressed against the crevasse walls until there was a sudden snap, and the integrity of the stone failed. All at once, the crevasse collapsed in on itself and the Eldrazi, just as the current carried Jori and Kiora into the unknown.

"This must be how Kozilek did it," Jori said, more to herself than to Kiora.

Kiora nodded. "How he remained undetected all this time?"

"Yeah," whispered Jori. "Wow. From what I've heard, this cave network was pretty small, home to a handful of goblins. At least that's what the explorer Zahr Gada once told me when we were comparing maps. And now..." Jori let out a low whistle. "For something to have the power to reshape the environment like this—wow."

She and Kiora were standing on an outcrop in a subterranean landscape. The flow of water that carried them through the cliff face had deposited them there, and from their position, they saw an enormous enclosed vista of angled spirals that shone with ripples of prismatic color. Jori knew these alien shapes. They belonged to Kozilek, and in spite of herself, Jori thought they might have been the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

Art by Jung Park

Eyes wide, she tried to take in the entirety of the space, but the sheer scale precluded such an effort. "It's unlike anything I've ever encountered," she said, but the words felt so weak compared to what she was seeing.

"The bident is that way," Kiora said, pointing out across a ravine in the cave. She didn't seem impressed by this spectacle. It was just another place in the world.

They picked their way around the gap, and they must have passed through several miles of caverns when Jori noted that the mark of Kozilek did not reach this deep into the cave network.

The path began to narrow, and soon their path tapered into a passage that demanded Jori and Kiora crawl.

"Are you sure this is the way?" asked Kiora.

"Look, I'm not sure about anything. Do you still sense the bident?"

"Of course I do. Nothing's changed. I just don't see how it could have come up here, where there's no water."

It was getting difficult to maneuver, but Jori managed to turn around to face Kiora. "Your guess is as good as mine. Actually, it's better than mine. You're our compass. So until we get some new information, we stick to the plan and keep going."

Kiora nodded, but it wasn't reassuring. Something had unsettled her.

As they pushed forward, the space grew tighter. Jori halted, and began to remove her helmet and armor plates. "We're going to have to make ourselves smaller," she said, anticipating a question. She then proceeded to lash the plates together by their buckles so that they formed a bundle that she could tow behind her. She'd done this numerous times, but Kiora didn't seem to share her confidence, for Jori could hear the Planeswalker's breathing quicken.

They had to keep going. Jori continued, and Kiora followed. Before long, they were on their bellies. Jori kept her torch out in front of her, and up ahead, she saw that path curved sharply upward.

"Do as I do," said Jori. She rotated onto her back and worked her body into position until she was able to lift her arms up over her head. Her fingers found divots in the stone, and it was enough. She pulled herself up until her feet were underneath her. She then reached farther up, found more finger holds, and hoisted herself into the path, which veered to the left before it leveled off. She waited there for moment.

"Kiora," Jori called, "I can't turn around. You can't either. You've got to keep going."

Another moment.

"Kiora," Jori repeated.

"I'm right," Kiora said, pausing to catch her breath, "behind you." Jori saw the glow of Kiora's torch out of the corner of her eye.

"You're doing great," Jori said, shimmying forward to make room for Kiora.

"I don't know if I can do this."

"You're already doing it. Right now, focus and stay calm." Jori tried to crane her neck to show that she was smiling, but Kiora didn't notice. Her face was buried in the crook of her arm.

"If I had my bident, this wouldn't be a problem," Kiora said, her words muffled. "I could bring the ocean, and reshape this whole place."

"It's why we're here—to recover the bident." Jori kept her voice steady. Panic was never helpful. It was the sum of helplessness, fear, and desperation, all braided together. At that moment, it was coiled around Kiora just as it had coiled around Jori out in the bay. She couldn't let it tighten around Kiora. If it did, it could wrap around her until she was paralyzed, or worse, it would snap and flail out dangerously. "Keep your eyes on me, Kiora. We're going to get to the other side of the tunnel. We'll get through this."

Slowly, Jori proceeded. And slowly, Kiora followed.

Ahead, the ceiling began to slope toward the ground. It wasn't much, but it didn't need to be much for the path to become impassable. Jori slid her torch out in front of her and pulled herself forward with her arms. Soon she was forced to tilt her head so that her cheek scraped the stone surface beneath her, and as she inched on, she felt the stone of the ceiling press in on her back.

"Why did we stop?" Kiora asked. She was still breathing hard.

"We didn't. Inches matter here." The words came out sharper than Jori intended. But she couldn't afford to be rushed. A bump protruded from the ceiling, and she struggled to find the angle that would allow her head to pass by it. Stone bit into the flesh of her ear, but she stifled a grunt to keep Kiora from succumbing to panic. One more push from her legs forced her head past the protrusion, but then she was pinched at the torso.

"Jori?"

Jori couldn't respond. She couldn't expand her lungs to find the necessary air to form words. Besides, at that moment, she had to contract, to become smaller, if only for a moment. Her fingers curled into tiny depressions in the surface of the passage, and she expelled the remaining air from her lungs. Hopefully it was enough. Her arm muscles tensed, and she strained to pull herself past the unyielding stone. She wriggled and scraped against its coarseness. Ribs compressed. Kiora was saying something, but it was all just a buzzing in her ears.

"Nnngh!" Jori let out when, at last, she felt her body slide forward. Her arms tugged again, and her body was free. When her arms relaxed, she just lay there with her cheek resting on the cool stone.

"...thought you were stuck," came Kiora's words as they became discernable once again.

"I'm fine," Jori said as she steadied her breathing. "I just need a moment."

"Jori," Kiora said after a moment had passed, her voice low, "I can't."

"You have to. If we turn around now, we'd only get ourselves stuck."

"I can't."

Jori stared into the darkness of the passage beyond the reach of her torch. Hours ago, she had watched as Kiora drove Lorthos to challenge the Eldrazi titans. She was a master of the colossal, at home among gods. And this was too much for her. There was also the added oddity that Kiora was a Planeswalker. Presumably, she could leave this world whenever she chose. But she didn't, and Jori left it at that.

"Look, the bident came through here. You can sense it. Which means there's a way through. I'm going to prove it to you. But I need you to stay calm."

Torch in hand, Jori began to inch forward again. This was her realm, the world of ruins and lost places. This was where she was at home.

Between hurried breaths, Kiora managed, "Jori, I..."

"You're going to help me, Kiora," Jori said as she put distance between the two of them. "You have to keep track of the bident at all times. If it moves, I need to know."

"It's on this level, up ahead." There was that certainty in her voice again—just a hint of it, but it was there, staving off the panic. When it came to the bident, Kiora was the expert. It was something she could focus on, something she knew.

Jori continued down the passage. It remained vaguely straight, and every few feet, Jori shared the status of her progress with Kiora; in exchange, Kiora shared the status of the bident. It went on like that until Kiora's voice was only a muffled affirmation, "On this level, up ahead."

And then, Kiora's message changed. "Bident's moving!"

Jori pressed her ear to the ground. Through the stone, she heard skittering. Then nothing. It was close. She couldn't risk a reply to Kiora anymore. There was a good chance that whatever was scrambling around already knew she was there, but why take the chance? She doused her torch, and she had to suppress a cough as a curl of smoke tickled her throat.

"Jori! Did you hear me? The bident moved—toward the surface!"

Jori crept forward in silence, feeling her way in the darkness. And all the while, she could hear Kiora, whose calls became louder as each subsequent one went unanswered. At least the sound might cloak her advance. The passage angled downward, and gradually, it widened on either side. Though the ceiling still hung low overhead, Jori was able to reach the spearhead that was tucked in the bundle that trailed behind her. It wasn't a proper dagger. But this also wasn't the first time Jori had to wield it as one, and as she edged forward on her belly, the point of the blade led the way.

In the utter blackness, Jori came to a place where the ground seemed to shift as she pulled herself across it, segments scraping against each other with her forward motion. There were crunching sounds where she planted her elbows. Not loose stones, Jori knew. Must be some kind of detritus. It didn't feel right. She stopped to feel out in front of her. More of the same. Then something squished when her fingertips brushed against it, and she yanked her limbs back, her stomach tightening.

Going on blind like this was foolish. Better to know and be known than to stealthily sneak her way into a death trap. She whispered the flame back to life at the end of her torch, and a world of twisted iridescent shapes came into being around her. Carapace plates and shimmery skin. Limbs bent and bifurcated, bristling with sharp, obsidian-like growths. And countless lidless, staring eyes, embedded randomly in flesh. Eldrazi spawn.

Kozilek's spawn.

Jori waved her torch over this otherworldly heap that she found herself on, and the way the flickering shadows played off of it made it seem as though the whole thing was writhing. But the Eldrazi were not moving. They were all dead.

The pile was higher in the middle of this chamber, and it would have touched the low ceiling, but Jori noticed the rim of a vertical chute that led up and away from here. Up. Toward the surface. The bident.

"Kiora!" Jori called.

"Jori!" Kiora's voice was strained. "What happened?"

"Any new movement?"

"No. What's happening?"

"Not sure yet."

To Jori, the whole scene suddenly resembled the bottom half of an hourglass. Something was discarding these carcasses down here like horrible grains of sand. That could be good...or bad.

One way to find out.

Jori did her best to stay on top of the pile as she made her way toward the center. In one hand, she gripped the spearhead, and in the other, her torch. The more she progressed, the more she could make out of the vertical passage above. When she got to the peak of the heap, she rose on her knees and held the torch high so that the shadows of the vertical shaft retreated.

Goblins—a lot of them—clung to the walls. One was so close that it retreated from Jori's torch.

Art by Steven Belledin

"Kiora! Trouble!" That was all Jori could manage before the first of the goblins was on her. One bounded down the cavern wall and pounced at her, driving its full weight onto her shoulders. The torch flew from her grasp as merfolk and goblin tumbled into the mass of Eldrazi dead. The goblin seemed all teeth and claws. "You can do this, Kiora," Jori yelled back through the passage. All the while, she fought to keep the goblin's bony fingers from closing around her throat.

Jori twisted so that she pinned the goblin beneath her. "Control your breathing!" A terrible shriek issued from the goblin's reeking mouth, and Jori drove her small blade into its chest. "And stay calm!"

As the goblin's body stopped twitching, Jori noticed that the creature lacked eyes. Dark-dwellers. They were at home down here. That didn't bode well, and the sound of scrabbling claws echoed throughout the chamber.

"Kiora?" But now it was Kiora's turn to be silent.

To Jori's left, the chitinous crunch of an Eldrazi carcass indicated another goblin. Jori turned to meet it with her blade, but a second goblin batted it from her grasp. For an instant, in the sputtering torchlight, Jori saw the goblins react to the blade clattering against the stone wall.

They saw with sound. Not a moment passed before she wrenched her helmet from the bundle at her waist and threw it up into the goblins' passage. Like her blade, the helmet's impact rang out as it caromed off the walls, and as it did, Jori channeled mana down through her arms. She clapped her hands with all her strength, and the echo of the helmet against stone amplified, doubling up on itself until the entire chamber vibrated. Jori felt it in her chest, and she wanted to cover her ears. The goblins were thrown off balance. Some staggered on their feet, and some were scrambling clumsily back up the walls.

This was her chance to escape. But to where? The room continued to shake under the onslaught of sound, and the ground itself felt unstable beneath the pile of lifeless Eldrazi. And as Jori struggled to keep her footing, she saw it. The bident—outlined in the hand of the one of the fleeing goblins.

She had to finish this. She had to beat this. It was clear that she needed the bident as much as Kiora did.

Jori bounded after the creature. It was still disoriented, and she caught up to it as it clung cautiously to the cavern wall. Jori jumped and grabbed hold of the goblin's foot, but it kicked out from the wall and Jori was dragged with it. They sunk into the Eldrazi muck, and then kept going. The weakened ground gave way, and suddenly the countless Eldrazi carcasses became a nightmarish quicksand. There was no correct move here, and she, the goblin, and the bident fell along with the dead spawn into the narrow chasm that had opened beneath them. Jori was aware enough to position the goblin between her and the oncoming ground, and when the ground arrived, it was with a crunch. The goblin lay motionless.

And Jori had Kiora's bident.

She just had to climb out of here and give it to her. "Kior—unh," she tried. It hurt more than it should have. Something's not right. She took a breath. That hurt too. Broken rib. Maybe several. Come on. She just had to get the bident to Kiora. She just had to climb out of there. From where she lay, the pit seemed vaguely conical, but it was too dark to tell. It was cramped, that much she was sure of. It would be tricky climb to the top even uninjured, but now, who could say?

Jori felt tired. It washed over her suddenly and mercilessly. Her limbs were heavy, and she tasted blood in her mouth. It wasn't promising.

Here she was. She had retreated into a deep hole, waiting for the end.

The end wasn't what finally came down the chasm for her, though. It was a different sort of certainty. "You got the bident?"

Jori coughed out an affirmation. Kiora had suffered the miniscule to reclaim her dominion over the vast. With what strength Jori could summon, she pressed the god-weapon into Kiora's hand, and smiled.

Immediately, a sheath of bright blue energy formed around the bident. Kiora held it up, and a deep rumbling filled the small pit. It continued for several moments, and then she heard it—water. Rushing water. Jori was spellbound as Kiora drew the entire power of the ocean to her.

"What do you say we get out of here?" Kiora said, though it wasn't a question. The roar of the water was soon joined by a series of deafening cracks that seemed to split the world. A deep, rumbling grinding followed, and the integrity of the entire cave network suddenly felt all too delicate. The sound grew closer, and Jori watched as the cavern above opened up to a torrent that cascaded toward them.

This was the power of the bident, the power of a sea god. Kiora had compelled the ocean to strip the land away. Millennia of erosion unfolded in a matter of minutes. It stripped away Kozilek's mark and liberated the small spaces deep in the earth.

Jori smelled salt in the air, and then the ocean water curled around the two merfolk, and carried them out with the bident.

7

Oath of the Gatewatch

By James Wyatt

Chandra has joined the other Planeswalkers, rescuing Gideon, Jace, and Nissa from the prison of agony in which Ob Nixilis had bound them. But while they were locked away, Ulamog and Kozilek rampaged across the land, leaving utter destruction in their wake. Zendikar seems on the verge of collapse.

Gideon was the first to emerge from the cavern, striding into the midst of the chittering Eldrazi swarm. The creatures were pressed close together into the cleft of rock where the cave mouth opened, making them easy targets for Gideon's sural—and Chandra's blasts and cyclones of fire. Every muscle in his body ached, battered by the demon's attacks and torn by the spells of torment they had endured. But he had fallen once more into the easy rhythm of combat, bolstered by the power of the other Planeswalkers who fought at his side.

Soon enough, the Eldrazi were scattered, like a wave crashing against unmoving rock. And as the last of them skittered away, as their shouts ceased and Chandra's fire dimmed and their pounding footsteps slowed, it was like sinking underwater: silent, and strangely still.

As though the world had died.

As one last Eldrazi twitched at his feet, Gideon cast a glance around at his companions. Each of them was staring in a different direction from their high vantage point in the mountains, taking in what had surely once been a striking vista—before the Eldrazi came. His own eyes swept across the ruin of Sea Gate and the desolate waste that spread out from it, and came to rest on the Eldrazi titans—two of them now. Ulamog, who had been trapped and at their mercy, and now Kozilek, whose sudden appearance had ruined everything.

The titans were creeping along, not quite side by side, leaving twin trails of destruction in their wake. But where Ulamog left the all-too-familiar bony dust behind him, Kozilek's trail was a bizarre swatch of gleaming stone formed in strange square spirals, coated in a sickly sheen of violets and greens. Of course, their spawn teemed around them as well, but Gideon saw no other signs of life.

Art by Jason Felix

His army was gone. All his work over the past months was undone. There was nothing left.

"Gideon," Jace murmured.

Gideon turned, but Jace nodded toward Nissa.

The elf had sunk to her knees, aghast at the desolation of her world. Gideon took a step toward her, but Jace tugged at his arm.

"Wait," Jace whispered. "What are you going to say to her?"

"What? I don't—"

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Jace said firmly.

Whether of their own volition or with the mind mage's prompting, all the things he might have said to comfort Nissa came to mind: we'll get them, we'll make this right, victory is still within reach, this desolate world will live again. Empty platitudes. Jace was right—he couldn't promise those things.

"I think we have to seriously consider the option of leaving Zendikar to its fate."

Jace had whispered, but Nissa clearly heard him. She sprang to her feet and whirled on them, her fists clenched at her side and her green eyes flaring. "I'm not going anywhere," she said. The ground trembled ever so slightly at her words—the first sign Gideon had seen that the world still lived.

Jace sighed. "Nissa," he said, "we need to be aware, at least, of the possibility that what we set out to do is impossible. Ugin thought so, and he has more experience with the Eldrazi than we will ever have."

"But you know he's wrong," Nissa said. "You saw the answer. You were the one who figured it out."

"How can we be sure?" Jace said.

Gideon lost track of their argument. He found himself staring down at the dusty ground. Scraps of armor and crumbling weapons suggested that they were standing among the dead, walking across bodies that had crumbled to dust at the Eldrazi's touch. His stomach knotted.

"Zendikar isn't the only world that needs our help," he heard Jace say.

"Zendikar needs me," Nissa retorted. "Whatever the rest of you decide to do, I am staying here. You can all leave if that's what you want. I'm staying."

Jace fell silent, and Chandra continued staring into the distance, tracing the path of the Eldrazi with her eyes while the rest of her stood uncharacteristically still. Gideon suddenly realized something remarkable: neither of them had left. Either one of them could have. Jace clearly wanted to.

But not without the others.

"You could leave," he said to Jace. "You could have left already, instead of trying to convince the rest of us. You too, Chandra. There's nothing binding you here. We could all leave."

Nissa's jaw tightened, but she didn't speak.

"For all we know, Zendikar is doomed. We could be the last people on this plane, the last ones standing between the Eldrazi and the beating heart of this world. And what can we do? What can any of us do against the Eldrazi—not one, but two monstrous titans?"

"And who knows where the third one is," Jace added quietly.

"Maybe there's nothing to be done. Maybe one of us—any one of us—can't do anything against such monsters."

Chandra made a strangled sort of sound.

"But maybe four of us can," Gideon said.

Art by Wesley Burt

Jace smiled, and Nissa's eyes widened.

"I think we can," Gideon went on. "Working together, I think the four of us could stand against just about any force the Multiverse decided to throw at us. So maybe we should."

"But—" Chandra blurted.

Gideon lifted a hand. "Hear me out. Look at what we have already done. We bound Ulamog. We defeated that demon. Each of us is powerful, in our own way. Your fire, Chandra—your fury is an incredible force. Nissa, you understand the soul of this plane and the flow of its magic in a way the rest of us cannot grasp. Jace, I underestimated you at first, but your quick thinking and forethought have saved me time and again. Together, we can take down the Eldrazi. We can save this world. And then we can save any other world that needs us, no matter how big the threat."

"You're getting ahead of yourself," Chandra said. "Maybe we should focus on the threat at hand."

"No," Gideon said. "We need to focus on why we're facing that threat. It can't be about just making up for our mistakes. It can't be just a personal vendetta. This is bigger than the Eldrazi, bigger than Zendikar. We need to be committed—" He saw Chandra wince at the word, but he pressed his point. "We need to be committed, not just to getting the Eldrazi off Zendikar, but to standing together against all the forces that threaten the Multiverse. No one else can do it. This is the task that falls to us, because of our power. Because of our sparks."

He took a deep breath, and rested for just a moment in the certainty that he had never been more right about anything.

"I have seen civilization fall," he said. "When the Eldrazi destroyed Sea Gate, they threatened all I believe. The people of Zendikar—my whole army—were nothing more than stinging flies in their path."

He shook his head. "Never again."

The others were all watching him now. As he spoke, he met the gaze of each of his companions.

"Not just the Eldrazi, and not just Zendikar. Never again, not on any world. This I swear: For Sea Gate, for Zendikar and all its people, for justice and peace, I will keep watch. And when any new danger arises to threaten the Multiverse, I will be there, with you three beside me."

Jace nodded slowly, while Chandra folded her arms across her chest. At least one of them was still with him, Gideon thought.

But it was Nissa who spoke next, kneeling to touch the dusty ground. "I have seen a world laid waste," she said. "As the Eldrazi sweep over Zendikar, the land is reduced to dust and ash. Left unchecked, they will consume it and everything on it."

She stood up, dust falling from her clenched fist. "Never again," she said. "For Zendikar and the life it nurtures, for the life of every plane, I will keep watch."

Art by Wesley Burt

Jace took a step forward, looking at Chandra. "Gideon's right," he said. "The four of us have extraordinary power. We have a unique opportunity—a responsibility, even—to use that power against threats like this. The Eldrazi, yes, but there are other threats that go beyond a single plane. I've heard it said that a Planeswalker is someone who can always run from danger. But we are also the ones who can choose to stay."

"Say the words," said Nissa, the hint of a smile breaking the mask of her anger.

"What?"

"Say the words," she repeated. "Like an oath."

Jace returned her smile. "Fine. I've seen..." His brow furrowed and the smile faded from his lips. "I have seen a greater danger than I could have imagined. The Eldrazi don't threaten just Zendikar. If we leave here, if we leave them alone, they could consume plane after plane until even Ravnica is laid waste. At this moment, Emrakul could be drifting through the Blind Eternities, looking for another plane to devour."

Gideon thought of Theros, of Bant, of Ravnica.

Jace nodded decisively. "Never again. For the sake of the Multiverse, I will keep watch."

Art by Wesley Burt

Gideon's eyes turned to Chandra, and he saw Jace and Nissa regarding the pyromancer as well. He wasn't sure what to expect from her anymore—except the unexpected.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. "That I could never take something like this seriously. Maybe you're right."

She turned her head and met Nissa's gaze. "But here's the thing," she said. "I've seen what we can do together. And Gideon's right—none of us can handle the Eldrazi alone. It's going to take the four of us in concert, combining all our magic, to bring them down."

She took a deep breath and let it out with a puff. "Every world has its tyrants, following their own desires with no concern for the people they step on. They're no different from the Eldrazi. So I'll say it: never again. If it means that people can live in freedom, yeah, I'll keep watch. With you."

Art by Wesley Burt

While Nissa embraced Chandra and the pyromancer surreptitiously dabbed at her eyes, Gideon reflected on the Chandra he had known on Regatha, who had been weighed down by a commitment she had made with her mouth but not taken on with her whole heart. He had a feeling this was different, and he smiled.

"All right, Gideon," Chandra said as she pulled away from Nissa. "What's next? You always have a plan."

"I do not," he said. "I need more information. I don't know how long we were in there, whether any soldiers are still alive—"

"I can tell you that," Chandra said. "I left Tazri and a small group of soldiers a couple miles back that way." She waved vaguely.

"Tazri. Good," Gideon said. "She'll know what resources we have left."

"Follow me," Chandra said, already walking.

"I have some ideas," Jace added. "Maybe you can help me turn them into a plan."

Gideon smiled and clapped Jace on the shoulder. Nissa was right behind Chandra, and the two men started off after them.

All Gideon's work over the past months had come down to this, he realized. To these four Planeswalkers making a choice: the choice to stay, as Jace had said. The choice to fight instead of running away. A choice—a commitment, a promise. To keep watch.

Even if that was all he had accomplished, it was enough.

Art by Yefim Kligerman

8

Brink of Extinction

By Kelly Digges

Two Eldrazi titans now roam Zendikar's surface. The network of stone hedrons that briefly imprisoned one of them is hopelessly disrupted, and the army that fought them is scattered. But four Planeswalkers took an oath: to keep watch over Zendikar and the Multiverse, to run toward danger rather than away, to stand against beings like the Eldrazi that threaten to destroy what people hold dear.

They took an oath. They formed a team. Now they need a new plan. And Jace Beleren, with the information he gleaned from the spirit dragon Ugin, is the only person who might be able to come up with one.

The sense of unified purpose was more fragile than Jace's compatriots seemed to realize.

He struggled to hear himself think over the sound of the others talking, the others thinking. They were walking—wanting to run, saving their strength—toward a ravine where Chandra had seen some other survivors. They all wanted Jace to come up with a plan. But Jace had come up with a plan, and it had failed, and that left him improvising.

Jace hated improvising.

"Whatever you need us to do, we'll do it," said Gideon, but to himself he added, if there's anything left to be done.

"I'm ready," said Nissa. "Zendikar is ready." But another thought skimmed across the surface of her mind: How do I know you'll stay?

"Come on!" said Chandra. "Spit it out!" Spit it out! her thoughts echoed, half a moment before—or perhaps half a moment after. She, at least, always seemed to point in one direction to such a degree that reading her mind was generally pointless.

They stumbled down into the ravine, which was covered in Kozilek's weird iridescent trail. Jace sensed the others before he saw them—half a dozen weary humans and kor, the shadowed mind of a vampire, and the cool and distant thoughts of two merfolk.

They rounded a bend in the ravine to find General Tazri and a few of her soldiers, the kor ambusher Munda, a sulking vampire who presumably represented Drana's interests, the ruin diver Jori En, and—oh, wonderful. Standing tall, bident in hand, cocky smile still in place, was the merfolk Planeswalker Kiora, looking none the worse for wear aside from a few torn fins. They were arguing.

Art by Chris Rahn

"We strike here," said Tazri, gesturing at a map. "The titans are on the move. We cut them off before they get too far apart."

"That's suicide," said Drana's emissary.

Gideon stepped forward.

"Commander-General!" said Tazri, snapping to attention. She radiated unease and relief in equal measure, her thoughts shying away from a recent, jagged memory that Jace didn't try to read.

Gideon grinned and embraced her.

"At ease," he said, standing back and appraising the group. "It's good to see you. It's good to see all of you."

Gideon clasped Munda's arm, put a firm hand on Jori's shoulder, and nodded to Kiora and the vampire.

Jace looked to Jori, then his gaze settled on Kiora.

Is she going to work with us this time? Jace asked, in Jori's head.

Jori flinched, slightly. Yes, she thought. Probably.

"Kiora," said Gideon. "I thought we'd lost you."

"I thought we'd lost a lot of things," said Kiora. Her smile faded, just for a moment, then returned with a kind of ferocious intensity. "Anyway. We're all here. What's our next move?"

"Our next move?" said Jace. "You're the one who stormed off, forced our hand, led your little flotilla to disaster, and now—"

"Yes," hissed Kiora. Her eyes burned bright, and she was no longer smiling. "Yes. All of that. Which is why I'm here, now, asking you what we are going to do." She scowled. "For some reason I thought you'd appreciate a gesture of humility on my part."

"On the contrary," said Gideon, before Jace could respond. "It's terrifying."

That brought the smile back to Kiora's face, at least. Jace could make people do what he wanted, if he absolutely had to, but he barely understood Gideon's ability to make people want to cooperate. There was nothing magical about it, just charisma and personal integrity—neither of which Jace had ever seen a pressing need to cultivate.

Which meant his first priority, in any given situation, ought to be winning Gideon over. A good thing to keep in mind, if they survived this.

"What is our next move?" asked Tazri. "We've got people scattered all over the basin. I'm trying to round them up, but there's still water in the low-lying areas, and the Eldrazi are everywhere."

"Jace has a plan," said Gideon. "Right?"

Heads swiveled toward him, eyes full of expectation. Full of hope.

Jace rubbed his temples. Closed his eyes. Opened them.

"All right," he said. "Listen up, because we don't have a lot of time. I had a backup plan if our hedron trap failed, but it only had one Eldrazi titan in it. Now we've got two on our hands, our allies are scattered to the winds, and I've got...call it half a plan. I'm going to need your help making it a reality."

He conjured an illusion: the ring of hedrons they had used to trap Ulamog. He sent them falling away as he spoke, splashing into an illusory sea, but he left the diagram that had guided them into place. The glyph that the spirit dragon Ugin had shown him—the shape the leylines needed to take to bind the Eldrazi.

The sounds of battle echoed from around the ravine. Chandra fiddled with her gauntlet and looked to Gideon. He nodded, and Chandra backed away from the solemn gathering, hair already igniting. Some people weren't meant to sit still, and Jace would rather have her blasting Eldrazi than fidgeting through a plan whose details weren't going to interest her. She stayed at the edge of the group, unleashing jets of flame at small Eldrazi that got too close.

"It's no longer possible to trap Kozilek and Ulamog," said Jace. "Not with the resources we have. We don't have the time or the people to build a hedron network around both of them. But this shape still has power."

He indicated the glyph, now empty of hedrons, a circle with three equidistant projections.

Art by Wesley Burt

"Nissa, if the titans were close together and stationary, if you could concentrate completely without having to defend yourself...do you think you could make this glyph using Zendikar's leylines? Directly, without any hedrons to help?"

Nissa's eyes grew distant, tracing the curves of lines that Jace couldn't see. Her hands flexed.

"Yes," she said. "But without the hedrons to hold the leylines in place, the binding will only last for as long as I can keep it going. And I don't know how long that would be."

"So we can't trap them," Gideon said. "What is it you're trying to do?"

This was it. His last chance to back out from what might be a terrible mistake.

Ugin, who was much older and much smarter than any of them, had given Jace two very clear directives: Don't try to kill the Eldrazi titans. And don't let the titans escape to threaten other worlds.

But one of the two was no longer on the table. The means to trap one Eldrazi titan were now beyond them. Two of the things were loose, and they could leave Zendikar at any moment. The consequences of their escape would be disastrous, with certainty. They would find another world, one without the benefit of Zendikar's preparations; they would feed on that world, and thousands or millions would die.

Unacceptable.

That left one option. Ugin had never been clear why he didn't want the titans killed—whether his objection had more to do with the risks of such an effort, or the consequences—and now Ugin wasn't here, at the moment of decision, to clarify. But he had spoken, at length, about the danger of allowing the titans to leave the plane, a danger that hardly needed to be explained.

"We can't trap them, and we're not about to let them leave," said Jace. "That leaves one option. We're going to kill them."

His companions, four other Planeswalkers and some very brave planebound fighters...nodded. Yes. Kill two enormous, unfathomably ancient beings using nothing but their own abilities and ingenuity. That made sense, didn't it?

Azor help me, he thought. I've signed on with heroes.

Art by Yefim Kligerman

"How do we do that?" said Gideon. "When we spoke before, you didn't seem to think it was possible."

"I didn't," said Jace. "But Ugin said something at the Eye that made me suspect otherwise."

"That was before you said we had to trap Ulamog," said Kiora. "You didn't mention it."

"Yes, it was," said Jace, "and no, I didn't. Ugin seemed to think killing an Eldrazi titan was a bad idea, and I promised him I'd avoid it if possible."

"You gave your word?" said Gideon. Breaking a promise didn't seem to sit well with him, a fact Jace would have to keep in mind.

"You held out on us," said Kiora.

"If possible," Jace repeated, to Gideon. "It's no longer possible." He turned to Kiora. "And I did hold out on you, because I had a plan that didn't require your cooperation. I'm sure you'd never do something like that."

Kiora smiled.

"Well?" yelled Chandra, from outside the ravine. "Do you have a plan yet?"

Jace ignored her.

"We're going to need to get the two titans closer together—close enough that Nissa can trap both of them in the same cluster of leylines."

"They don't care about us," said Kiora. "They won't rise to your challenge."

"The titans are drawn to concentrations of life," said Jace. He turned to Gideon and Tazri. "That's where your people come in. Position them in the basin in strength and engage directly with Ulamog and Kozilek."

"You want to use our army as...bait?" said Gideon.

Jace sighed.

"What's the difference between bait and an ambush party?" he asked.

Gideon waited, frowning, but Tazri spoke up.

"Bait doesn't get a choice," she said.

"That's right," said Jace. "Gideon, you've said these people are willing to lay down their lives for Zendikar. Well, it's time."

Gideon's frown deepened.

"I can gather whoever we have and tell them the plan," said Tazri. "But you're the one who can make them believe it. Tell them what's at stake. Give them a choice, Gideon. When you say it, I don't think it'll sound like a very hard decision."

Gideon breathed deep, in and out.

"Rally the troops," he said. "I'll get the details, then join you."

Gideon clapped Tazri on one armored shoulder, and she hurried off to rally the troops.

"The plan," he said.

"Right," said Jace. "Ugin described each Eldrazi titan as a man sticking his hand in a pond, and the original hedron trap as a spike driven through the hand. The titans we can see—those are just their hands. The rest of them are outside the plane, in the Blind Eternities. 'Killing' the part we can see doesn't do much. Our metaphorical man wanders off, down a hand...but free."

"They're already free," said Gideon.

"Yes," said Jace. "The spike's come loose. That's why we need to act. But if we just attack them—if we really hurt them—then they pull their hands out of the pond and wander off to bother some less dangerous little fish. So we've got to be smart about it. If you've got the means to drive a spike through a man's hand, what else can you do?"

He realized, with annoyance, that he was repeating the same folksy metaphor that had irritated him when Ugin had used it, right down to the leading questions and tone of knowing mysticism.

"You can pull him in," said Nissa.

"And then he drowns," said Kiora, with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Exactly!" said Jace. "So assuming Ugin's metaphor is broadly accurate—and frankly, at this point, we don't have any choice—we pull the two titans into the physical world completely, and then we can kill them."

"How?" asked Gideon.

"That," said Jace, "would be why I told you I had half a plan. I don't know."

"That's your idea?" said Kiora. "Pull the shark into the boat, and then, um...?"

"No," said Jace. "My plan was to present the problem to my multitalented assortment of intelligent, experienced allies and see if they came up with anything helpful."

"I can do it," said Nissa, staring off toward some distant horizon.

"How?"

She turned, as though she hadn't noticed Jace standing there.

"It's complicated," she said. "Let me show you."

Jace hesitated, remembering the chaos and power of the elf's mind. He hadn't been in control, and that frightened him. But what choice did he have? He closed his eyes, and opened Nissa's.

Again, the world was lit with green fire, a pulsing light cast by blazing lines that crisscrossed the sky. Their friends were glaciers, creeping along, as Nissa and Jace communed at the speed of thought. And the titans...the titans...

In Nissa's vision, Ulamog was a pit of blackness, and Kozilek a writhing enigma. The leylines arced toward them—twisted, frayed, screaming in protest.

I can't... he said, in her mind. I don't understand this.

The last time he'd been in Nissa's mind, she'd helped him ignore the leylines, to focus on the clean outline of his illusionary model rather than the vibrant, overpowering reality. He tried to withdraw from them again, but Nissa's thoughts seemed to hold his own firmly in place. He couldn't—she shouldn't be able to—

Look, said Nissa. See.

I don't—

See, she insisted.

He looked. He saw.

Images flashed, memories of the hedron network as it once was, as Nissa had seen it. Leylines crisscrossed the world in shallow arcs, guided and constrained by the hedron network. Eventually, across thousands of miles, they looped, crossed, and enclosed the titans in a prison of pure mana.

The hedrons pulsed, occasionally, sent out bursts of wild mana through the leylines. Those bursts rippled across the land, giving rise to whirling winds and tumbling rocks of the Roil. Nissa hadn't understood it then, but she did now: the titans were trying to escape. The hedrons drained their strength, dispersing their exertions out into web of leylines. She'd thought her world was angry. She hadn't realized it was fighting for its life.

Art by Michael Komarck

Nissa's memories flooded through him, some of them eerily familiar. The Eye of Ugin. The vampire sage Anowon, swearing that the Eldrazi would leave Zendikar if they were freed. A tall, white-haired man with a sword, his dry, elegant voice speaking a name—

You've met Sorin Markov?

—but the flood of images continued. A stone dragon, its eyes glowing blue. A hedron crackling with white fire, the linchpin of the whole network, binding the half-opened prison in place, humming with the effort. Nissa's staff striking the hedron. A widening crack, and a flash of pure white light—

The image faded, replaced by more abstract imaginings.

Inside a glyph made without hedrons, the titans would be trapped for only a short time, but they'd be in direct contact with the leylines—the same leylines that could disperse the titans' energy into the plane itself.

Art by Tyler Jacobson

The hedrons were dampeners. With the hedrons in the way, the glyph couldn't be used to kill the titans. But without the hedrons...

We can tear the titans apart, said Jace.

Drain away all their strength into the leylines, said Nissa. Into Zendikar. So this world can do to them what they've been trying to do to it. Devour them.

It may be hard on Zendikar, said Jace. If bleeding off the titans' excess energy caused the Roil, draining all of it—

I know, said Nissa. Zendikar can do it.

A moment of silence, then, in the space between minds.

You removed the last failsafe, said Jace. You let them out.

I let them out, said Nissa. Because I didn't trust Sorin, and I wanted to help my world. I thought they would leave. I was wrong.

It happens, said Jace. You had bad information.

And I knew that, and I acted on it anyway, said Nissa. Her thoughts were firm, unyielding.

Why did you let me see that?

Because I didn't want to wonder if you'd pulled it from my mind, said Nissa. And because I want you to know why I'm doing this. I have to make this right.

I understand, said Jace. I—

He hesitated, unsure how the elf would react.

I'm part of the reason the failsafe was needed.

Reluctantly, he lowered his own mental defenses, pulled out a particular set of memories, and let her experience them, in the same sort of rush. Anowon guiding him to the Eye. The fight with Chandra and the dragonspeaker. The Eye opening...

You let them out! said Nissa.

I let them out, said Jace. Chandra and I. We were tricked into it, but that doesn't really matter, does it?

Three Planeswalkers had unlocked the titans' prison and allowed their spawn to swarm Zendikar. One had removed Ugin's final failsafe and opened the door. Three of those four were standing here, prepared to fix their mistake.

No, said Nissa. All that matters is setting it right.

He withdrew from her mind and opened his eyes, blinking at the dim and steady light of an unlined sky.

"Well?" said Chandra. Seconds had passed.

Jace swallowed. Speech felt clumsy and unwelcome after an extended mental conversation.

"We have a plan," he said. "We pull them in, use the leylines to drain their essence into Zendikar, and let the plane itself devour them."

"That's not so complicated," said Kiora.

"I assure you, it's extremely complicated," said Jace. "But Nissa and I think it can work."

"Where do you need us?" said Gideon.

"We pick a spot," said Jace. "You and your troops lure the titans—" He smiled. "—into an ambush. Nissa and I wait there, with a small detachment of troops to guard us. When the time comes, Nissa weaves the leylines together and binds the titans. Your job is to hold off the Eldrazi for as long as she needs."

He turned to the merfolk Planeswalker, who was twirling her bident...eagerly? Or nervously?

"Kiora, you know your capabilities better than I do," he said. "I'm open to suggestions."

"That's...remarkably intelligent of you," she said.

Jace laughed.

"I'd have accepted 'considerate.'"

"I'll clear out the basin," said Kiora. "Keep the swarms of Eldrazi off your backs and make sure your troops have dry ground to walk on."

Art by Jason Chan

"What about me?" asked Chandra.

"Go with Gideon, or stay with us," said Jace. "Set things on fire. But don't attack the titans. That risks driving them away and ruining our only shot at this."

Chandra scowled, but nodded.

"What about you?" asked Kiora.

"I coordinate," said Jace. "Where everyone is, when to start Nissa's spell, and what to do if it starts going wrong."

"Ah," said Kiora, with distaste. "Leadership."

"No," said Jace. "Leadership is Gideon's job. This is management."

"Even worse," said Kiora.

"One more thing," said Jace. "Once we start doing this, the Eldrazi titans may...change."

"What does that mean?" asked Nissa.

"There's more to their bodies than we see right now, and we're going to be drawing the rest of them into physical space."

Nissa's bright green eyes widened. She understood.

"Meaning?" asked Gideon.

"Meaning they may get, um, bigger," said Jace.

"Bigger?" said Chandra, almost eagerly.

"May?" spat Kiora. "What kind of plan is this?"

"A messy, last-ditch, improvised plan with altogether too many unknowns and if-thens," said Jace. "It's also the only plan we have. Unless you'd like to try to stop us, in which case we can all waste our strength fighting each other and let the Eldrazi eat the whole damned Multiverse."

Kiora stared him down. He stayed completely out of her mind—if she sensed that he was intruding, she'd turn against them.

"Fine," she said. "We'll do this your way. And, mind mage?"

"Yes?"

"If this doesn't work, you'll have me to reckon with."

"I'm sure I will," said Jace. "But if this doesn't work, I doubt you'll need to worry about it."

"Do or die," said Gideon. "I like that." He raised his voice. "We have a plan, and we have the strength and determination to see it to completion. Let's go."

Kiora and Jori left the ravine. Jori gave Jace one last look—was that doubt?—and then she was gone.

Gideon turned to leave, then turned back.

"What the demon said, about killing the telepath first..."

"What about it?"

"I trust you," said Gideon.

Jace put two fingers to his temple and said, in his most ominous mind-mage voice, "I know."

Gideon rolled his eyes, clapped Jace on the shoulder—which he had to know by now Jace didn't care for—and trotted off. Chandra had already left, and Gideon ran to catch up with her.

Jace and Nissa climbed out of the ravine and stared up at the Eldrazi titans—at what they could see of the titans—towering over the floor of the newly drained basin.

"Sir!" barked a voice behind them.

Jace turned to see two squads of soldiers led by a dour human woman. They were irregulars, running in loose formation rather than marching in ranks. They halted in a ragged line in front of the two Planeswalkers and stood at attention.

"Rear guard reporting!" said their captain.

It took Jace a moment to realize that the woman was talking to him. Even in the guise of Ravnica's Living Guildpact, he wasn't accustomed to any great degree of deference.

"Oh," he said. "Uh, as you were."

They stared at him, eyes hard.

"Say something," whispered Nissa.

You say something, Jace thought at her.

I'm not the one who needs to give them orders once the battle starts.

Jace surveyed the troops—his troops—and the weight of what they were attempting took on harsh reality. He could explain. He could draw them a diagram, illustrate the metaphysics, haul out his metaphors and calculations.

None of that would inspire them to fight and to die. Not the way—

Well, that was one way to approach the problem.

He swallowed.

"It may not seem like it," he said, "but in a few minutes you're going to be the most important people on this battlefield. In the whole world, in fact."

He gestured.

"This is Nissa," he said, walking along the line. "She'll be binding the titans, and ultimately she'll be the one who kills them. If she goes down, nothing else matters. Plan accordingly."

Eyes widened, jaws set. They understood their task, he was certain of that. But were they actually prepared to perform it?

What would Gideon say?

Jace smiled. Of course.

"For Zendikar," he said, raising one fist in the air. It felt thin to him, lacking Gideon's armored fist, his baritone war cry, his iron conviction.

None of that mattered. The soldiers shouted as one voice, holding their weapons aloft.

"For Zendikar!"

Jace turned and faced the titans. In the valley beneath their shadows, amidst multitudes of enemies, friends and allies fanned out, preparing to put his plan into action.

Art by Jason Felix

9

Zendikar’s Last Stand

By Doug Beyer

The plan is in motion, and all of Zendikar hangs in the balance. Chandra is ready to do her part, and so is Kiora—but if Zendikar is to be saved, the Planeswalkers must execute the plan flawlessly.

The air smelled ancient, disintegrated, as if even the dust granules from Ulamog's wake had fallen apart into tinier and tinier pieces until Zendikar's ruin was a film spread across the world.

Chandra slashed the air with arms ablaze, drawing the attention of a hundred-foot-tall, life-consuming titan. This was, in fact, on purpose. Somehow, an impossibly short number of days ago, she had been graced with the prestigious title of Abbot of Keral Keep. She wondered what her title would be now. Something like Bait, First Class.

Chandra brought up the rear of one of two groups of Zendikari, the one assigned to Ulamog. As the crowd of kor, vampires, goblins, elves, and other allies marched toward the meeting point, they kept their eyes on the titan over their shoulders. She couldn't blame them. The plan involved being as noticeably, tantalizingly alive as possible, in front of a being made to ingest life.

Art by Anastasia Ovchinnikova

In the distance, Chandra could see Gideon at the front of the other half of the bait army, coming from Kozilek's direction. His sural flashed in the sun, a focal point for the Zendikari who followed him. Chandra wondered whether Kozilek even saw Gideon's weapon, or just saw the morsels of energy who followed it.

Directly in the path of the two titans stood Jace and Nissa, like ants standing in the path of two trampling giants. This, too, was on purpose. Chandra could just see Nissa, standing in silhouette at the crest of a rocky hill, working with Jace to prepare the spell that would save the world.

Jace's warning came before Chandra heard the chittering. "Chandra, we'll deal with them. Keep Ulamog moving as best you can."

A wave of Eldrazi drones scrabbled into the path of the bait army. Her group couldn't afford to slow down to engage them, and Chandra couldn't clear them out from her position at the rear. She could only hope Jace was right. She looked up and ricocheted two spiraling blasts of fire off the uncrackable faceplate of Ulamog.

"Kiora, there's a contingent coming from the south. Can you contain them?"

Kiora stood tall, gripping the bident tightly. Waves of seawater flowed and bounded around her like dolphins, lifting her and carrying her across the Halimar Sea and onto the land. She passed the base of the hill where the mind mage and the elf stood, and nodded at Jace. She pointed the bident and swept up onto the grassy plain, facing the shard-crowned drones and multi-legged processors head-on.

The Eldrazi swarm would intersect with the pyromancer's flank. At a tilt of the god-weapon, a wall of water swung around her like a sea god's punch, thrashing the crawlers back over the ridge and into a ravine. Kiora pivoted on a jet of seawater to check for other stray aggressors. For the moment, the soldiers' path was clear.

"Contained," she thought back to Jace.

Art by Jama Jurabaev

Kiora looked up at one of the landmasses that floated over the continent, an airborne island that shed a continuous waterfall of mist. A shadow passed over the landmass, and Kiora checked over her shoulder—it was cast by Kozilek, his massive bulk stealing sunlight as he approached. She understood the nature of this so-called titan now. It was no personified god, but a distortion phenomenon that was intruding from the Blind Eternities. It was nothing but a sick hoax playing out in the fabric of the world. Not a trickster, but a trick.

The luring plan was working so far, but then, that was the easy part. The mind mage and elf had the crucial job—to gather Zendikar's leylines without the use of hedrons, and to bind the titans with them so that the leylines themselves would drain the colossi away. It was makeshift magic, unrehearsed and dangerously intangible.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

Even worse, the very act of pulling an Eldrazi titan fully onto the plane was unprecedented. The other Planeswalkers had no idea of the magnitude of these cosmic forces of the Multiverse, or of the damage they could cause. Even the elf, who claimed to have a personal connection with Zendikar, could not possibly grasp the impact it could have on the world. One guess stood between victory and ruin.

But Kiora would be glad to be rid of the Eldrazi forever. She would wait, and she would see.

Kiora ascended on a pillar of water to survey the battlefield. In the distance, past the ruins of Sea Gate, she could see the ragtag Zendikari armies approaching, and beyond them the two titans. And below her, on a small hill overlooking the briny valley of the Halimar Basin, stood the mind mage and the elf. The elf who believed she could be the key to everything.

Nissa was the key to everything, and Chandra knew it. The two bait armies merged, crossing directly in front of Nissa and Jace.

"Chandra, Gideon—that's far enough. Disperse the army. The titans are in position!"

Art by Igor Kieryluk

Chandra thrust her fist into the air, sending a firebolt sizzling into the sky, where it crackled and exploded high overhead. When the Zendikari saw the signal, they began to scatter. Chandra ran alongside the others, throwing more flares into the sky for good measure. Gideon caught up with her, and they ran together up the side of the basin as the ground began to glow with soothing green light.

Chandra looked behind her, up at the rocky overhang, to see Nissa scintillating with magic.

The signal flares were reflected in the crests of Kiora's waves, looking like a sea on fire. She swiveled to see the titans stepping into the valley, the meeting place, the trap. And when the elf lit up, Kiora took a breath of dust-hazed air.

Vines of bright, verdant magic became visible, crisscrossing the land from horizon to horizon. They curled and stretched and rearranged themselves, coiling in toward the elf. The ground under Nissa's feet rippled with light, and Kiora saw that same light shining from the elf's eyes.

A great wind picked up and the sky dimmed. Kiora could see the mind mage watching the pattern of leylines forming down in the valley and under Nissa's feet. She could hear whispers of the telepathic communications between them, as if she were overhearing urgently conversing ghosts. Kiora caught indistinct words were about the shape of the glyph, the pattern of leylines, an unbreakable loop, a stable pattern of intense mana—

All at once, the pattern fell into place. A tripartite glyph a hundred feet wide appeared on the floor of the valley in fierce green fire. Miles-long loops of pure mana blossomed from the glyph, lashed themselves around the titans, and pulled.

Art by Chris Rallis

Kozilek and Ulamog tried to lurch away, to wrench themselves free from the land—and they did not just lurch back, Kiora noted, but up. The entangled titans drew themselves up to their full heights, and for a long moment, as winds lashed the landscape, it looked as though they would simply pull free of the leylines. The slack in the loops of mana disappeared as they pulled higher and higher.

But then the leylines snapped taut. They held fast, straight lines anchoring the titans to Zendikar.

The Eldrazi titans' shriek was tectonic. The earth slid, ripped, and undulated. Cracks erupted in the ground and shards of broken terrain tore their way to the surface as the land bucked and heaved. The elf's spell had actually managed to make contact with the titans, and this was their reply—the kind of reply that broke worlds.

All around, Eldrazi attackers appeared, jaws clacking. Kiora swept up onto a new outcropping of land and pushed back a wave of marauding Eldrazi with her own wave of seawater. As wind whipped at her fins, she called on the mana to summon a leviathan to her side, but she could feel the land resisting her call. Almost every drop of mana was being soaked up before Kiora could draw on it.

The elf's spell held the titans in place, but at the cost of absorbing all of Zendikar's mana. Would she let the land go to ruin to trap them?

"Nissa!" shouted the mind mage over the winds. "Pull them! You have to pull them onto the glyph, to drain them!"

Kiora saw the elf straining, her arms outstretched, channeling the leylines through the spell and through herself. She swept her arms from ground to sky, and a fresh set of leylines lashed onto the titans. The land lurched with effort.

Something deep in the earth cracked, but somehow Kiora heard the sound coming from overhead.

Motion in the sky drew Kiora's attention. Around the mighty titans, the sky bulged and folded like a brewing storm. But this was not a thunderstorm—this was something else. The color of the heavens twisted from hazy blue to boiling magentas and greens. The sunlight wavered, overshadowed by a spreading, rippling, polyp-like texture. And to Kiora's shock, she saw what was happening to the titans—

Bending, distorting, stretching.

Their heads inflated and curved into elongated necks that rainbowed across the sky.

Their faces widened, curved concave, and unfolded to the horizon and back again.

And then it began raining Eldrazi.

This is new, thought Chandra.

The sky of Zendikar had become the titans. Their forms had enveloped everything, a dome of bruise-colored flesh and bone sheets and void-edged shards. Rather than the titans being pulled into Zendikar, it felt as if Zendikar were now inside the titans—or that, somehow, dimensionality had inverted, and now the outside of their enormous bodies was in every direction Chandra could see.

Ulamog's upper body still rose over the battlefield, but its limbs and tentacles projected out incongruously from various points across the sky. A portion of Kozilek's crown was stretching and rotating across the coarse firmament like an insane moon. Boundaries muddled and entities merged. Otherworldly tendrils reached down out of the magenta heavens, contorting and stretching, and dripped toward the ground like funnel clouds. Eldrazi emerged and unfolded from each offshoot, dropping onto the land with either graceful landings or messy crashes.

Chandra ran into the new Eldrazi throng, slashing with her forearms and cutting a hot swath through them. Distressingly, it appeared that the mass of Eldrazi were all still gruesomely connected to the two titans. In fact, it looked as if she was trying to cut into two enormous, cohesive, sky-filling entities, far more vast than either of the titans had been.

She could see Gideon's sural sparkling and hear him commanding the Zendikari. There were battle roars as soldiers rushed forward to push back this new force of Eldrazi, and screams as the soldiers were torn apart.

Art by Slawomir Maniak

Behind her, she heard Nissa cry out.

"Nissa!" Chandra yelled on impulse. But it was drowned out by unnatural gales and the sounds of battle.

Nissa's eyes had gone blind with shimmering green, and mana spread out from her in straight lines to the sky in every direction. The leylines pulled upward on the glyph, and in the process, pulled on Nissa. Chandra saw her lift into the air briefly, dragged up toward the titan-filled sky. She fell back down onto the ground on her knees, arms shaking, teeth gritted.

"Jace," Chandra yelled, "she can't sustain this!"

"It's working!" Jace yelled. "Hold on!"

"Working?" Chandra spat. "How can you say that?" She blasted back a few Eldrazi intruders that were crawling toward Nissa.

The land folded violently. Scores of Zendikari fell to the ground. Chandra saw cracks open up across the valley, widening and swallowing the land, shaking the outcropping where Jace and Nissa stood. Above, something new was happening to the titans.

Kiora looked up at the tendril-dangling membrane the titans had become—and she could see the cracks spreading across their forms. The glyph spell had formed a connection between the titans and Zendikar, and the leylines were slowly, gradually eroding them. They were beings of the Blind Eternities, and being dragged fully into this reality was tearing at their very existence. The titans, finally, were beginning to break.

But at the same time, the land of Zendikar was breaking as well, and far more rapidly. The air was a storm of broken gales. The sea was swirling into waterspouts. Kiora knew that the land under their feet would be the next to dissolve.

Art by Volkan Baga

Kiora gripped the bident, feeling its power grow in her hands. She sensed the sea rising, gathering, answering her call. But she could sense its depletion at the same time. Zendikar was being set against the titans in a contest of consumption—and the titans were designed to consume.

The mind mage looked at her, and she heard his words echoing in her mind. "Now, Kiora. Use your waves and clear the hordes. Give Nissa more time."

Kiora swung the bident this way and that, and seawater crashed back against the encroaching Eldrazi. But she saved one final spell for one final juncture. As she battled back the swarms, she watched the landmass floating above her, the same cascading island that she had seen before the spell began. As long as the land masses, those hallmarks of her world, stayed aloft, she could give the elf more time.

Chandra's fingers felt itchy. As the land broke apart below their feet, the titans moaned and thundered above. Fissures ran through their forms like widening, jagged stripes across the sky. They didn't just look horrifying and sky-encompassing. They also looked, for the first time, vulnerable.

She caught Gideon's eye as he ran past, slashing two Eldrazi drones into pieces. He glanced up at the sky as well. "If we could ever hurt them, now's the time," he said, and leaped up past her, toward the outcropping where Nissa stood.

Chandra's hands became fists. She had done her part as Bait, First Class. It was time to contribute something more final.

"Jace!" she shouted. "Let me take them out! Let me burn them to cinders!"

"No!" said Jace down at her, aloud and in Chandra's head at the same time. "Remember? Any damage to the titans or to Nissa will snap the leylines and collapse the glyph spell. We'll lose them!"

Chandra held out one hand, and it became white-hot fire. "Not if we make one spell count."

"I said no," Jace thought at her. "Just keep those Eldrazi back!"

As Kiora saw the floating landmass begin to tip and sink out of the air, her heart sank with it. It tumbled down, spinning its waterfall in a spiral, and collided with the chaotic sea, breaking into an explosion of whitewater. Kiora scanned the sky, and saw that other floating landmasses were also falling all around her. They fell in slow motion, rolling in asymmetrical somersaults, ramming into the ground and blasting up cataclysmic plumes of dirt.

Art by Florian de Gesincourt

We have failed, thought Kiora.

She could see it now. The titans were connected to the fate of Zendikar now. Under this elf's magic, the titans would only die if Zendikar did.

"Revane!" she yelled at the elf. "It's the end. Let them go!"

Nissa twitched her head blindly. The elf was still maintaining the spell, but Kiora could tell she heard her.

"What?" said Jace. "No! Kiora, you have to keep the swarms at bay! We need to let the spell finish them!"

"Won't work," Kiora shouted, clutching the bident and pointing it straight out to one side. "We did our best. But Zendikar will perish if they do." She pointed the tips of the bident at the sky full of titans. "They already want to leave. Let them go. We can fight them again someday!"

Nissa was shaking her head as her body stretched out with the leylines, lines of worry creasing her forehead with sweat.

Jace's cloak billowed in the whipping wind. His face was severe. "They must be destroyed—here, and now," he shouted. "Or we're just dooming every other world, risking millions of lives."

The poor mind mage didn't see it. He was willing to commit to his mistake, even if it meant all of them dying. "We're about to doom this one," Kiora said. "The world is falling apart. Soon we will, too."

"Let the plan work," Jace said firmly.

She grasped the bident, and willed the waters to come to her aid. "If you won't end this, Beleren," she said, "then I will."

Chandra's fist was ablaze and her eyes were locked on the sky. "Jace, let me burn them!" she shrieked.

"No!" shouted Jace, whipping around to her.

Chandra saw the merfolk Kiora sweeping past on a wave of water, holding her bident weapon aloft. "We've taught them a lesson," she shouted. "They won't return. It's time to set them free."

Gideon was climbing up onto the outcropping to protect Nissa. "I'm with Chandra," he said, his voice strong over the churning winds. "We can't let them go, but we can't hold them like this. We forfeit lives every moment."

A broken landform spiraled in toward the outcropping, slamming into the basin near the glyph. The ground ruptured.

"Decide...soon..." Nissa managed through clenched teeth.

The merfolk Kiora was breathing heavily. "You will drop the spell, elf," she said. She raised the bident high, and Chandra saw a tower of waves thundering up from the Halimar. "You shall set them free. And if you won't do so willingly..."

Art by Winona Nelson

A wall of water three miles wide rose into the air. It swirled and twined into a single mass, a floating, shimmering shape shot through with sea plants and coral and fish. It was a seawater globe, hovering overhead. Kiora had emptied the entire Halimar Sea, and was holding it through the strength of her will. Her gaze was fixed on the outcropping above Chandra, on the source of the spell—on Nissa.

"Chandra, can you do this?" came Jace's hurried words in her mind.

Chandra's fist glowed like a tiny sun as she looked back and forth between Nissa and the Eldrazi firmament. She wanted desperately to flood the sky with fire, to unleash her fury on the abominations that would threaten her friends. But she wasn't sure she could create such a singular blast. How could anybody be sure? "I think so!" Chandra thought back.

"You have to be certain. Tell me now."

Chandra saw Nissa's face turn down to her. Somehow the elf's blind green eyes had found Chandra, and even with the chaos all around them, Nissa nodded. Somehow she knew it was possible, and in that moment, in that bond of trust, Chandra knew it too.

"I'm certain," Chandra thought at Jace.

Kiora held the sea god's bident straight up, like a sword ready to strike.

"Time is up, Revane."

She reared back, and the water reared back with her.

And with one bodily motion, she hurled the entire sea at Nissa.

Nissa's eyes widened.

—But the sea split in two, and each half split in two, and each resulting half split and split again, and the mass of water dissolved and dispersed into mist. Water roared down, sweeping away Eldrazi creatures. Sea life splashed down, flapping.

The mind mage stood between Kiora and Nissa, his eyes glowing with power under his hood, his extended hand edged with crackling blue magic.

Kiora did nothing for one stunned second. Then she bellowed, not words but inarticulate sounds of rage.

It was now or never. Nissa was safe from Kiora's spell, but she could collapse at any moment. Either Chandra would destroy every part of the titans with a single spell, or they would lose all of Zendikar, and lose the Eldrazi to the Blind Eternities in the process.

Chandra let the fury grow. Fire crept from her fist up one arm and down the other. Her hair ignited.

She thought of how she beheld Ulamog for the first time, as she was planeswalking back to Regatha—she thought of how its image imprinted itself on her vision even after she had left the plane. She couldn't wipe it out of her mind, and couldn't rest while it was still out there. This is what the Eldrazi were—senseless, colossal horrors that made coexistence impossible. If they were released from Zendikar, they would follow Planeswalkers wherever they traveled, pursue life wherever it flourished, and end it all. Chandra knew this was what she and her friends had come to put to an end. This was their mission. It was their oath.

Her hands burned white-hot. She looked up at the glowing green vines, the leylines of mana still pulled taut, binding the titans and attaching them to this world. She knew the leylines would break when she cast her blast of pyromancy. She willed herself hotter and hotter as landmasses spiraled down to earth, as the ground broke to pieces, as the sea boiled itself away.

Chandra unleashed the spell. Fire streamed into the sky—

Art by Chris Rallis

—and instantly she knew it wasn't right.

The torrent of fire touched the contorted Eldrazi mass, but it wasn't nearly enough. Her fire could barely scratch the titans even when they were finite, discrete beings. She couldn't burn their epic entirety now, any more than she could burn an entire plane.

In the corner of her eye she saw one of the floating islands tumbling out of the sky, and she realized with a tiny part of her mind that it would barrel right into her. Simultaneously, she could see the glyph glow bright, down in the basin, as the fire streamed across the titans' bodies. It was all falling apart. The glyph would expire soon. Her fury would expire soon.

They would all die soon.

She was barely conscious of Gideon leaping from the outcropping, blocking the landmass with his own body, of a shower of pebbles raining down as it broke against him. She just concentrated on hurling as much fire out as she could, even though it wouldn't be close to enough—

Chandra felt a hand resting softly on her shoulder.

And then she felt the mana of an entire world streaming into her.

Art by Howard Lyon

The leylines. Nissa had been the focus for all of Zendikar's fury, and now, with Nissa's touch, that fury poured into Chandra instead.

Chandra was the focus now, the nexus that connected Zendikar to the titans. She knew she couldn't hold their reins as Nissa had done. So she tried something else.

She screamed.

And in her scream, she willed all of Zendikar's fury through herself, into her spell, into her fire.

The leylines themselves caught fire, igniting like a spark hitting streams of fuel. Flames spiraled from Chandra into the streams of mana and branched out across the sky, following the paths of the leylines, enveloping the titans.

Either Chandra was still screaming, or everything else was.

The world flashed with a roar of apocalyptic orange, then went blinding white. Chandra's legs buckled, and she collapsed.

There was thunder, and a hellish blast of heat, and an awful noise of the sky ripping into pieces. As Chandra's consciousness gave out, she decided it must be the sound of the world dying.

Art by Jason Felix

Kiora couldn't see anything through the smoke. She pressed her gills shut, but she could still taste ash. Fires burned in the haze and puddles steamed. Flakes of ash fell, curling in little loops out of the gray above. She thought of the pale dust that Ulamog left behind when it consumed the land—was that what she was seeing? She wandered through the dense, opaque air in a weird silence, tripping over corpses of Eldrazi creatures and Zendikari alike.

She couldn't hope. She couldn't pain herself with wonder. She searched the grayness, touching bodies. She helped a few survivors stand on their feet.

Kiora stopped at one body. She recognized this one. It was the pyromancer, splayed out in the mud, her red hair spread over the turf. Kiora knelt down and pushed her over onto her back.

The pyromancer lay there for a moment, then suddenly curled on her side in a spasm, coughing mud. When she finally raised her head, they exchanged a look, but Kiora said nothing. Kiora reached down a hand to help her up, but when the pyromancer took it, she grimaced and grabbed at her back. Kiora released her and let her lie there.

Together they looked up through the falling ash.

They saw two forms against the sky, but they were afterimages made of smoke, like the ghosts of fireworks. Between the dissipating towers there was a crease of blue sky.

Gradually, others appeared out of the smoke. They gathered, walking, limping, trudging toward each other. Gideon and Jace. Tazri. Noyan, Drana, and Jori.

And the elf. Nissa staggered over a mound of earth and sat on the ground all at once. Her eyes looked at nothing, but Kiora saw the elf's fingers dig into a patch of bare earth, where the glyph had been burned permanently into it.

The land's crust was quiet now. Many landmasses had crashed to earth, but a few more floated silently by in the distance, ignoring gravity as they always had.

Kiora watched as the other survivors slowly realized that it was over. There was no hurrah. There was no speech. No blanket of relief or gladness settled across the crowds.

A few hands squeezed shoulders.

Some questioning looks were exchanged.

Heads were shaken, or nodded.

Bandages were produced. Healing hands touched the wounded. Impromptu search parties were organized. Rescuers gathered around sinkholes or seawater-filled trenches. A few straggling Eldrazi were discovered and dispatched.

Art by Izzy

Kiora put the bident on her back. She looked across the streaked, stained faces of the allies and turned toward the opposite horizon. She put the ruins of Sea Gate at her back and put her feet into motion—left and then right, left and then right. And she didn't stop walking for a long time.

10

Zendikar Resurgent

By Ari Levitch, Doug Beyer, Kelly Digges, & Kimberly J. Kreines

The Eldrazi titans have been destroyed. The world of Zendikar has been saved. Now the four Planeswalkers who acted to make this so must decide what is to come next.

Art by Wesley Burt

His throat was all nettles and brambles when he swallowed. He must have been snoring. On the comfort of a bedroll, cradled in the warmth of an oxhide blanket, Gideon let his eyelids slide open. It was still dark in the tent but he threw the blanket aside, and though the air was still, it bit at his skin with a crispness that portended the world beyond the tent. It was enough to raise goosebumps before Gideon could find his shirt and pull it on in the predawn dark. He splashed water on his face from a wooden bowl that rested on a chair next to the entrance, and then finished climbing into his clothes. A water skin hung from one of the tent's support beams. Gideon removed it and slung it over his shoulder before pushing one of the two heavy tent flaps aside.

As he stepped across the threshold, a glint from within the tent caught his attention. He cocked his head, and the outline of his breastplate took shape in the far corner beyond his bedroll. And it would remain there, along with his greaves, pauldrons, shield, and sural—at least for the moment. He didn't need it just then, and he was suddenly aware of the lightness he felt around his back and shoulders. It felt good.

So did the chill. A sharp breeze brought it from the east, driving off the remaining warmth he had found beneath his blanket. Above the wind, Gideon could hear the waterfall that sent its contents spilling down from floating masses of land at the other end of the encampment. Purple was beginning to bloom on the horizon, and Gideon breathed in deep to savor the morning air that was laced with the faintest hint of cook fires.

Then he was off at a run, the water skin bouncing lazily between his shoulder blades.

This was his ritual, if it could be called that after only three days—waking up before sunrise, unencumbered by weapons or armor and unburdened by the logistics of keeping an army together, Gideon would simply run. He could focus on his breathing. That each footfall followed the last was his only concern.

Gideon's path took him around the perimeter of what was left of the great Zendikari encampment. The site was a collection of floating islands surrounding an enormous derelict hedron that leaned to one side. They had all been lashed together by ropes and bridges.

Art by Adam Paquette

It was here, at what had come to be known as Sky Rock, that the people of Zendikar had mustered in unprecedented numbers to stand together in defiance of the destruction that the Eldrazi had promised. Before the army marched on Sea Gate, the encampment had swelled so large that the gravity-defying stretch of land was not enough to accommodate everyone, and a secondary camp went up in the shadow below Sky Rock. But the numbers had since dwindled. Many hadn't escaped their end at Sea Gate, and now that the titans had been destroyed, more and more of the Zendikari host were trickling away each day.

Above him, clouds, turned orange by the dawn, stretched out across the dim sky. He followed their course with his eyes toward the horizon, where the sun threatened to breach the surface of the sea. Between him and the horizon, Gideon's gaze found the ruins of Sea Gate. Even in the low light of early morning, Gideon could see what had once been a wall of brilliant white stone, topped with a mighty lighthouse, now reduced to a crumbling stump of its former self—a rotted tooth in the mouth of the bay.

Art by Zack Stella

Sea Gate. Halimar Basin. It all happened there. In his mind, Gideon juxtaposed the sequence of events, complete with the destruction of the Eldrazi, onto the landscape. This was how Jace must see the world all the time—a series of scenarios playing out in some logical course that he could see. Jace had proved his worth. He stayed when others would have left. He was the right person for the puzzle of leylines. And now, the two of them were oath brothers.

Gideon's mind turned to the Gatewatch. This group of four Planeswalkers who shared his vision. Along with Jace, Nissa, a stranger to him only days ago, was now committed to helping worlds beyond her own.

And then there was Chandra. In the end, she had come. Of course she had.

Gideon pounded across a rope bridge that spanned two colossal floating stone slabs, its wooden planks roiling violently with each heavy step. At the other side, he paused for a moment, unslinging his water skin and tilting it up to his lips to drink.

"Sluggish this morning?" came a voice from behind. The words were punctuated by boots on the wooden planks behind him, and Gideon whirled around to see the blur of a figure rush past, water sloshing from the leather pouch to soak his shirt.

Tazri. He smiled and raced after her. "Just giving you a chance to catch up, Commander-General," he said. This time it was his turn to pass her. He pumped his legs harder, breaking into a full sprint. Any moment now, he'd be able to throw some jest at her over his shoulder. Any moment now. But for all his effort, Tazri kept pace. And Gideon loved it.

The two soldiers ran together without speaking for a while, making their way around the encampment to the sound of their steady footfalls and even breathing.

Soon the camp was stirring. More cook fires blossomed, and the accompanying sounds of an army coming to life soon filled the air. "I'm going to address the volunteers today," Tazri said without breaking stride. Gideon turned to her, and then followed her gaze to where to where the next group of departures—a mixed company of kor and elves—was preparing for their journey to some far corner of the plane.

Ulamog and Kozilek were dead, but reports of their spawn have continued to come in. "How many do you think will stay?" Gideon asked.

Tazri let out a noise that was somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. "You know, I have this gnawing feeling that in a few days, you and me'll still be running around this place all by ourselves."

"Maybe you should be working on your speech, then." Gideon let her see that he was smiling, but she was somewhere else. She was in the command tent, arguing with her generals over maps. She was wrangling supplies. She was in the field, leading from the front. And she was articulating speeches. The burden of command. It was now hers—Commander-General Tazri. And Gideon couldn't think of a better choice.

"And what about you, Gideon?" Tazri said. "Can I count on you to help sweep away the remaining Eldrazi?

When the two of them had been reunited after his escape from the demon's cave, Gideon had noticed a change in Tazri. It wasn't something he could define, at least not at the time. But now, he saw it as a cool calm. The maelstrom that came with leadership would roil around her, but she would remain unbowed by it. She was resolved to weather it for as long as it was necessary. "I'm yours to command, Commander," Gideon said.

"Until..." Tazri's words trailed off.

"Until," he confirmed. Gideon wasn't from Zendikar. He'd come here to do what he could against the Eldrazi. But there would be other threats to other worlds, and he had pledged to the Gatewatch to intervene where others couldn't.

Their run resumed its silence.

"Well, until then," Tazri said a moment later, "I'm glad you're with us." It was her turn to smile, and suddenly she pulled ahead of Gideon, who couldn't keep up.

Two rough, callused hands reached out and came to rest around iron. The hands were mostly wiped clean of the dried blood of the battlefield, but red lines remained under the fingernails. The iron they touched was not the pommel of a sword or the curved face of a shield, but the cold metal belly of a stout stewpot. The hands felt the rough underside of the cauldron, touched the sturdy squat legs, glided over the heavy-handled lid and the ridiculously sized ladle hanging to one side, and found places on either side of the pot. There, resting gently against the metal, the hands imparted warmth. Steady heat flowed from the fingers and palms into black iron, and from the metal into the cold broth inside.

The broth slowly warmed, and eventually it bubbled, drumming the lid and allowing comforting aromas to escape. Smells of herbs and hearty tubers and sweet ripe alliums—they were a recipe of convenience, the ingredients amassed on a midmorning sortie by a few of Tazri's soldiers. It was prepared on-site, in the same place where titans had risen and titans had fallen—the field of battle that was now just a field.

Art by Wesley Burt

Chandra released her hands from the sides of the pot and used her arms to shift in her not-terribly-comfortable makeshift seat. She took the excessively large ladle in one hand and opened the lid with the other. She had to stretch slightly to reach the top of the pot, and her goggles steamed as they just cleared the lip. She reached in and dipped generously into the goulash, to get at the good chunks that had settled, and raised up a brimming portion.

She served bowlfuls of breakfast from her seat until the line ran out. And when Tazri's scouts found more roots and herbs and filled the pot with more broth, she heated that, too, and she and others served seconds to everyone, and some had thirds.

Chandra's muscles were tired of sitting, and the object she had chosen to rest on wasn't doing a very good impression of furniture. But she didn't have much choice in the matter.

As soldiers lifted the cauldron away from where Chandra sat, Nissa appeared, bearing a stacked armful of blankets. Chandra smiled a crooked smile at her as Nissa dumped the blankets, layer after layer of coarse, fragrant wool, into Chandra's lap. Nissa's eyes were quiet and thoughtful, green touching green. Chandra liked the way her movements were gentle, her hands kind.

Chandra looked at the blanket pile. She closed her eyes and centered herself. She hugged the blankets suddenly, her face squashing into the wool. And as her body encircled them, as her palms (mostly wiped clean of blood) pressed against the rough weave, the blankets warmed.

It felt strange now, using this humble bit of pyromancy, but good. A good, simple spell of heat, conjured with an ordinary thread of mana—after having been the human conduit, for a brief moment, of an entire world's mana. Chandra felt stretched somehow, strained in some abstract muscle she couldn't flex, and this, by contrast felt...

Minimal. Unassuming. Right. Back to wisps of mana and straightforward heat spells. Back to normalcy, almost.

Faint traces of steam curled up from the wool. Chandra relinquished them, and Nissa gathered them up in her arms again. Chandra watched her new—ally? Teammate? No, friend is what we call those people who help us survive. She watched Nissa walk among the convalescence of tents and makeshift beds, carrying the stacks of magically warmed blankets. Nissa draped them one by one over sore shoulders or across shuddering chests, as Zendikari healers and field-clerics made their rounds.

Jace didn't come to say hello. Chandra saw him standing next to a boulder-sized hedron, his cloak wrapped snug around him. He stood still, but he looked like he was strolling somehow, maybe wandering through the events of the last several days somewhere deep inside his own head.

Finally Gideon approached, stowing his sural at his waist. He wore minimal armor this morning, but she could see that he still scanned the pitted turf around them, checking the tents, watching the bindings of Sky Rock—always vigilant, she thought, in war or in recovery. He stopped next to where she sat, at her shoulder. "Did a sweep with Tazri. There are still stragglers out there, but most of them are put down. We think it's done."

Chandra knocked him on the bicep. "Nice work, Lord-Commander-Knight-General."

He hitched his thumbs into the straps on his chestplate. "It's just Gideon, again. Is that thing at all comfortable?"

Chandra pushed with her arms to shift on her makeshift chair. She shrugged. "I asked to sit on it."

He nodded absently. "You going back to Regatha?"

"I meant what I said before. Had my hand up and everything."

"I know. But you can still return, if you have commitments there."

Chandra chuckled. "Are you giving me permission?"

"What I mean is, we're done here, for now. You've done your part. We can reconvene when we're needed again."

Chandra jabbed an elbow into his ribs. "I'm in this, Gideon. I'm part of the Gatewatch now."

He pointedly didn't look down at her. "How're the legs?"

"Enh," she grunted. Chandra's hands went involuntarily to her knees. She could feel the sensation in her legs, but just barely, like she only had partial ownership of them. She tapped her feet on the ground to prove they could wiggle. "Feeling's returning. Healers said it was something about the spell, the big one—I used reserves I shouldn't've. Said I'd be fine in a couple of days. But I'm thinking hours. Try to stop me dancing."

Gideon's eyebrows twitched unevenly for an instant, a gesture he couldn't entirely hide. The man wore concern like an undergarment, hidden under layers of strength and steel.

"If you hadn't come..." he started. He shook his head.

"Well, if you hadn't asked," Chandra said. And she punched him in the arm.

Gideon just stood straight, trying to find something on the horizon to look at.

"Hey," Chandra said. "We helped people. And we'll do it again."

"You stick to those minor spells for a while," he said, squeezing her shoulder. "Don't strain yourself. I'm off to..." He looked around. "I'll do another sweep." He walked off.

Chandra used her hands to pull on her thighs and cross her own legs. She leaned back against the "chair," which looked a lot like fire-charred bone but, up close, didn't really feel like bone. She wondered what part of Ulamog's skull this had been—maybe it was from the back, where the titan's spinal musculature had exploded into shards of nothingness. She hoped it was from the front, between its jaw-structures, the faceplate that had turned toward her as it was consumed in fire. She leaned back against it and put her rough, callused hands behind her head.

Art by Wesley Burt

Jace stood next to an enormous fallen hedron, apart from the throng of busy Zendikari. From this vantage point he could see where Nissa's glyph of leylines had burned itself into the valley floor, shining with a green and wholesome light. He wondered if it would fade with time.

He watched as Gideon approached Chandra, who was still confined to her ridiculous battlefield throne, still unable to walk after channeling the mana of an entire world into one huge blast of fire. Jace wondered if that would fade with time, too. He'd been assured that it would.

She'd been hunched over, focusing intently on the delicate pyromancy of heat without fire. As soon as she saw Gideon, she grinned, her shoulders loosened, and those ever-fidgeting hands of hers fell still. By the time they were done speaking, she was sitting a little bit taller. Gideon's history with Chandra was nearly identical to Jace's, from what he'd been able to glean. Like Jace, Gideon had been sent after her to retrieve a stolen scroll. Now she greeted Gideon warmly, but still looked at Jace with suspicion.

Maybe there was magic in what Gideon did, but Jace didn't think so. He'd watched the Commander-General move among his troops after the battle—saying a few quick words, putting a firm hand on shoulders, kneeling silently at gravesides and listening to remembrances of the deceased. Everywhere he went, relief and hope took root. Leadership. Jace wondered if it would work on him the way it did on the others.

Jace ought to be able to replicate the effect with telepathy, to work out from people's thoughts the right thing to say or do to give them solace and comfort. To make people trust him. But Gideon wasn't a telepath, and everyone knew that. Gideon just knew what to say. Maybe that was why it worked. Maybe Jace should leave charisma to the charismatic and focus on arming Gideon with the best possible information to make those honest, forthright decisions of his. Jace felt a pang of guilt, already making plans to win Gideon over in some imaginary future argument to bring the others around. But then, that's what Jace was always doing. Making plans.

That was what bothered him about the present situation. No plan. Two Eldrazi titans were dead—truly dead, it seemed, according to Jace's calculations, Nissa's intuition, and the sheer volume of Eldrazi viscera splattered over the basin. That left one titan on the loose—perhaps still lurking on Zendikar, but more likely not. Ugin's missing allies, Sorin Markov and Nahiri the Lithomancer, still hadn't shown up, and Ugin himself had yet to make an appearance at the scene of the titans' fall.

Jace's new friends seemed content to help the Zendikari as they reunited with their families, cleaned up the prodigious mess, and hunted down the enthralled vampires and Eldrazi worshipers and what few of the brood had survived the conflagration. All laudable, to be sure. But these were tasks that the locals could undertake themselves. Ugin's allies, the third titan's whereabouts, other looming problems like the Chain Veil...these were threats that could only be handled by Planeswalkers. By the Gatewatch. That was the point, wasn't it?

A cry from the sentries broke his reverie, a pattern of trilling hoots that indicated a flying enemy. Jace scanned the horizon for a panicked moment—there, barely visible against the clear blue sky, was a luminous winged shape, flapping slowly.

Ugin.

"Don't engage!" shouted Jace, leaping to his feet. "That's a friendly!"

I hope he's feeling friendly, anyway. There was, in fact, no guarantee of Ugin's current mood, but Jace certainly wasn't going to allow his side to start hostilities.

Others took up Jace's cry. Crossbows were lowered and nascent fireballs allowed to dissipate as Ugin swooped in low over the valley...heading right for Jace.

Gideon, Chandra, and Nissa understood. Gideon arrived at a dead run, Nissa seemed to melt out of the underbrush, and Chandra unsteadily pulled herself to her feet, nearly collapsed, and hobbled over using a long length of charred bone as a cane. All three of them were standing with him by the time Ugin's forty-foot-long body slammed into the jagged ground in front of Jace, his claws tossing up shards of distorted stone.

Art by Raymond Swanland

"What have you done?" bellowed the spirit dragon. A blast of heat washed over Jace, Ugin's internal fires stoked by anger.

Despite Jace's protestations, Zendikari soldiers clustered around Ugin. They bristled at his furious tone, pikes and swords out. Ugin didn't seem to notice them, which was probably an accurate estimation of their ability to harm him.

"We saved Zendikar," said Nissa.

"What have you done?" asked Chandra. "Lately, I mean?"

Jace stepped forward.

"Ugin, the plan was mine. The others are guilty only of trusting me. If you take exception to what we've done, you can take it up with me and me alone."

"Like hell he can," said Gideon.

"We all killed the titans," said Nissa. "We'll all stand responsible for that."

"Actually, I killed the titans," said Chandra conspiratorially. "But they helped."

"Beleren," said Ugin. "Explain."

"I operated on the information I had," he said, trying to keep the waver out of his voice. Wise and ancient and intelligent Ugin might be, but he was still a dragon, with a dragon's size and temperament. And teeth. "We made a concerted effort to trap Ulamog, as you and I had agreed, but we were disrupted by a rogue Planeswalker following some ancient vendetta. I think we can all be forgiven for not foreseeing that."

Nissa's hands tightened on her staff. Ob Nixilis had escaped, and Jace knew it weighed on her. Count that among their extraplanar obligations, then.

"Granted," said Ugin. "Go on."

"The other surprise was that Kozilek was still on Zendikar," said Jace. "A fact you either didn't know or didn't relay. Respectfully, I don't find either scenario especially comforting."

"With the hedron network in its tattered condition, my ability to track the titans was curtailed," said Ugin.

"So the third one could be anywhere?" said Gideon.

"I can handle this, Gideon," said Jace.

"Your little escapade rang this plane like a bell," said Ugin. "I was able to take a thorough survey using the...echoes. Emrakul is gone, and has been for some time."

Jace was unsure whether to be relieved or horrified.

"Regardless, Kozilek caught us off guard," he said. "We had two titans to deal with, no time to prepare, and no idea how long they would remain on Zendikar. You yourself said they must not be allowed to leave."

"You had no reason to believe they would do so immediately," said Ugin. "You should have tried to trap them again."

"On the contrary," said Jace. "I had reason to believe Zendikar's defenders might act rashly and drive them off, despite my efforts to convince them not to. In the end, one of our allies tried to do exactly that. We didn't have time to construct a new hedron trap. But we have among our number an animist, capable of shaping Zendikar's leylines directly, without the use of hedrons. Given that—"

"Yes, yes," said Ugin. "It all follows. You could hold them using the glyph, but without the hedrons to bleed off energy and hold the leylines in place, your only options were to let the titans go or pull them fully into physical space and destroy them."

Jace blinked.

"You said that wasn't possible."

"I said it wasn't possible for you," said Ugin. "And you led me to believe you weren't going to try, so spare me your sanctimony."

"Wait," said Nissa. "You knew the titans could be killed? Did you know that when you trapped them here?"

Ugin rose up on two legs, towering above them like a schoolmaster.

"You've killed two living creatures that were older than worlds," said Ugin. "Without knowing their purpose, their role, the impact of their lives or their deaths—you risked this entire plane and unknown consequences beyond it to kill them. Because you could."

In the silence that followed, only Chandra spoke: "You're damned right we did."

Ugin dropped back to all fours with what sounded like a sigh.

"There is no force in all the Multiverse more dangerous or capricious than Planeswalkers," he said, shaking his horned head.

"What will happen now?" said Jace.

"Unknown," said Ugin. "As far as I'm aware, no one has ever killed an Eldrazi titan before. I have theories about what the Eldrazi are, and what might happen now that two of them are dead. The consequences may not accrue until long after all of you are dead, so you may count this as a victory if you wish. I, for my part, will study their remains, and prepare for the future."

Jace's friends made noises of disgust.

"Let me work with you," said Jace. "Tell me your theories about the Eldrazi. Together—"

"You, Jace Beleren," said Ugin, "have proven to be an extremely arrogant and unreliable partner. If you still insist on helping me, you may best do so by leaving. Immediately."

"What about your old allies?" said Jace, incredulous. "What about Bolas?"

"I won't stop you from investigating these matters," said Ugin. "Though I urge you to bear in mind that Sorin Markov and Nicol Bolas will be far less forgiving of your interference."

Ugin waved one hand, a gesture that took in the Zendikari surrounding him and the valley filled with what was left of the titans.

"Tell your people not to interfere with my work. If I want a piece of one of the carcasses, I shall have it. If I want something left where it is, it stays."

Chandra shifted to stand between Ugin and the portion of Ulamog's skull she'd been using as a chair.

"You'll have to take that up with them," said Gideon.

"I doubt you want me to do that," said Ugin, snorting a puff of searing heat. "Goodbye, titan-slayers. May we meet again under more harmonious circumstances—or not at all. Either would suit me."

With that, the enormous dragon vaulted skyward, circling out above the newly emptied Halimar Basin.

"That went well," said Chandra.

Jace buried his face in his hands.

Gideon gestured, and Chandra, Nissa, and the other Zendikari slowly turned and wandered back to what they'd been doing. Then he sat down on a rock next to where Jace had been standing.

Jace looked down at Gideon, then sat next to him.

"It sounds like our troubles aren't over," said Gideon. Sitting down, he was only a little taller than Jace.

"They're not," said Jace.

He'd briefed Gideon about the dragon Planeswalker Nicol Bolas, who'd apparently engineered the Eldrazi's release. About Sorin Markov and Nahiri the Lithomancer, who had helped trap the Eldrazi long ago and who Ugin seemed to think were both still alive somewhere.

"I know we're not done here," said Jace. "But—"

"Those oaths we took," said Gideon. "They weren't all alike, because we're not all alike."

That fact hadn't escaped Jace. It was a way for one oath to bind four very different people—until "justice and peace" and "the sake of the Multiverse" didn't line up. But they could deal with that when it came.

"I need to stay here until I know that the people here are safe," Gideon went on. "I imagine Nissa will stay until she's certain life will continue. Chandra...well, I don't presume to speak for her." He chuckled.

"But ultimately we need to know about the next threat," he said. "Not just clean up after the last one."

"Yes!" said Jace. "You understand the value of gathering intelligence."

"Absolutely," said Gideon. "What do you think should be our first priority?"

"Bolas is terrifying," said Jace, shaking his head. "I'd rather not come face to face with him until I know a lot more about what's going on. And we have no way to track this third titan or guess where she might go. That leaves Ugin's allies, Sorin and Nahiri. I'll go to Innistrad and find Sorin. I'm not sure he'll be more help than Ugin has been, but he can't be much less."

Gideon nodded slowly.

"I trust your judgment," he said, looking Jace in the eye. "When can you be ready to leave?"

"Today," said Jace. "I need to gather supplies and get some intelligence on Sorin, and then I'm ready."

"Good," said Gideon. "We'll be here."

He stood up, without the slap on the shoulder that he usually administered after giving people orders, and walked away.

Giving people orders...Jace didn't feel ordered around. Had he just—

I'll be damned, thought Jace.It worked on him, too.

Art by Wesley Burt

The darkness made it harder for Nissa to come up with a suitably viable distraction. She had managed to postpone acknowledging the weight in her pocket for as long as the sun had hung in the sky. Between delivering heated blankets to the Zendikari, joining Gideon on one of his many sweeps of the perimeter, and washing the crude dishes in the nearby falls—and then there had been the welcome, if unsettling, interruption provided by the spirit dragon. She hadn't had to stop moving since waking. But now the night had claimed the consciousness of most of the people at Sky Rock, the natural flow of activity had ceased, and the constant comforting stream of low murmurs had been replaced by silence. It was not the silence of nights on Zendikar that Nissa remembered from her youth. In that time, a night was only silent in comparison to a day. While the noises of the elves at her camp would cease for the most part at night, it only seemed to be with the purpose of making way for the sounds of the creatures that were just beginning to wake. But on this world, the Zendikar of the time after the titans, there were not creatures just beginning to wake. Instead there were mounds of chalky corruption. There were not trees with branches for the wind to whistle through; instead there were negative spaces, holes lined with repeating, unnatural patterns etched in an oily sheen. On this Zendikar, the silence of night was far more complete. And it was that silence that rang in Nissa's ears as she finally stopped moving.

It was the first time she had been to the glyph since the moment it had been seared into the ground. The others had visited it. She had seen Jace studying it, had watched Gideon walk along it, tracing the curvature of the lines with his steps, lost in thought. Many of the Zendikari had come by as well, leaving small tokens along its edges, taking off their shoes before stepping into the softly glowing grass. And the soul of Zendikar was there too. Nissa could feel it. It had been there, waiting for her all day. She only had to reach out. But she did not. Not yet.

Instead, careful not to tread on the glyph's lines, she made her way to the centermost point. Standing on the triangle of clear ground, she rolled up her sleeves. A tension drained from her shoulders as she knelt to the land, surrounded on all sides by the warm, green gleam. It was time. Nissa began to dig.

When she had finished, there were four holes. One for each of the seeds that the vampire had given her what felt like years ago. Nissa had plotted the holes with care, measuring and planning for the size of each plant. The Jaddi tree would need the most space to grow. Its canopy would one day stretch across the width of the whole glyph or farther. It would provide welcome shade to weary travelers in its youth, and one day its expansive tangle of branches might become the home of a tribe of elves. Or, Nissa amended, perhaps a tribe of Zendikari—elves, kor, goblins, and humans together. They could live in the Jaddi and eat the fruit of the kolya grove, for there would surely be a grove. The kolya seed would feed on the power of mana here in the glyph—it would be the first to break ground. The tree's slender trunk would grow toward the sun and its flowers would quickly turn to tender, tangy fruit that would nourish the people of Zendikar. And the perilous beauty of the red mangrove would keep the ecosystem, and the people, in check. Then there was the bloodbriar. Nissa's breath caught on a raw spot deep inside. The bloodbriar of Bala Ged. A plant from her own home. Perhaps the very last of its kind. How many others had she taken for granted in her youth? Now it all came down to this one. This one would be charged with protecting all the other life that would subsist here with its nettled vines, the same way others of its kind had offered protection to the Joraga for ages.

Nissa could see this new forest taking shape even now as she held the pouch of seeds in her hand. One day it would be all of the things she dreamed for it to be. One day it would be vast and reaching. One day it would be lush and filled with power. One day it would be protected by tenacious thorns. But who would protect it until that day? Who would shepherd Zendikar from what it was now to what it would one day be?

"For what it's worth, I know it's going to be hard for you to leave." Chandra's voice startled Nissa; she had been so lost in thought that she hadn't heard Chandra approach. That was a strange thing. Nissa was not usually caught unawares. Stranger still was the way Chandra's words had reached the deepest layer of Nissa's consciousness, touching the feeling that was present but unwilling to wholly manifest. Chandra was the pyromancer, not a telepath.

Nissa looked up, meeting Chandra's eyes. They were wide, amber pools of sincerity, and in that moment Nissa felt they could see straight into her soul. She was unused to others being able to grasp her perception of things, let alone understand how she was feeling. Chandra had done both in a matter of moments. Perhaps that's why Nissa responded so honestly. "I don't know if I can leave." The words out of her mouth, Nissa held her breath.

But Chandra didn't say anything right away. Instead she lowered herself to the ground at Nissa's side. They sat there amidst the holes Nissa had dug but not yet filled, encircled by the glowing lines of the glyph, the lines that were only there because of what Chandra had done. If it hadn't been for the powerful pyromancer, Nissa reflected, not only would the glyph not be there, but the land in which the glyph was etched would have been completely obliterated. Chandra had stepped in at the moment that Nissa had felt the world coming apart. Chandra had reached out to Nissa and they had connected in a way Nissa had never connected to another being, not even to the soul of Zendikar. Together the two had combined their powers into something that was enough to destroy the Eldrazi titans. Just barely. Both had been terribly weak after it had ended, Chandra unable to walk and Nissa, for a time, unable to see or to stop her limbs from trembling. But now they were here, they were healing. And so was Zendikar. Only it would take much longer for the world than it had taken for Nissa and Chandra. Perhaps Chandra would understand that. Nissa looked to the pyromancer, who still had not uttered a word. "It's extremely fragile right now," Nissa began, an attempt to explain. "It came so close to fracturing. There's still so much that could go wrong, so many dangers. Whatever happens next will shape it, will help to make it whatever it will become."

"I bet it will be amazing." Chandra smiled and laid back on the cushion of soft growth, hands behind her head.

"I don't want to miss it," Nissa said, surprised at herself for admitting this aloud. "I want to be here when it happens."

"I can understand that," Chandra said.

"And," Nissa added because she felt she had to, "I don't just want to watch. I want to keep guard. Someone should be around. To protect it. To help it along. I can do that. I should do that."

They sat in silence, Nissa running her fingers along the folds of the pouch of seeds. She thought of the day she had first held them, of the weight she had felt, so much more than four little seeds. Of the responsibility. And of the fear that she would fail. But she had not failed them. At least, she hadn't failed them yet. There was still more to do. Wasn't there? Nissa broke the silence that had settled between her and Chandra. "If I stay here on Zendikar—"

"You have to do what you have to do," Chandra said. "I won't hold it against you."

Nissa cleared her throat. "What about the others? Do you think they will understand?"

"Gideon and Jace?" Chandra said. "Sure they would. They'd never make you leave."

Nissa exhaled—that was good. She had been worried. They had each taken an oath.

"They didn't make me leave Regatha either," Chandra said. "But in the end, I chose to come here anyway."

Nissa looked to Chandra. She couldn't imagine what would have happed if Chandra hadn't been here on Zendikar; she didn't want to imagine it. "I'm glad you came. Thank you."

"I almost didn't. I had a lot of students back there, you know. I was head of the whole school. Abbot."

Nissa raised her eyebrows, impressed.

"I know it sounds crazy to put me in charge."

"It doesn't sound crazy," Nissa said. "I've known since the first time I met you that you have a natural connection to great amounts of power."

Chandra smiled. "And that's exactly why I left." She leaned up on her elbows. "I could have stayed and taught those students to be talented pyromancers. I'd have done a good job, too. At least they'd all know how to make a really amazing self-sustaining fiery vortex."

Nissa laughed, and then she realized that laughing was something she hadn't done in a while. She enjoyed the way Chandra's nature could so easily make her smile and laugh.

"But Mother Luti and the others are going to teach them well too," Chandra said. "They'll all become pyromancers, maybe not with quite as much skill at vortexing as I would have imparted, but they'll be all right. There was something else I had to do, something that Mother Luti and the others couldn't do. Something that no one else could do. And that was to come here. I think that's what Gideon was getting at when he said all that stuff about us having sparks and power and what that means. You know?"

Nissa knew exactly what Chandra was talking about: the speech Gideon had made when they had come out of Ob Nixilis's cave and seen the world on the brink of destruction. Gideon's words came back to Nissa: "We need to be committed...to standing together against all the forces that threaten the Multiverse. No one else can do it. This is the task that falls to us, because of our power. Because of our sparks."

"No one else can do it," Chandra said, once again making it seem as though she could read Nissa's mind. "But you can. We can. Together. Besides," she added mischievously, "don't you want to see how long it takes before Jace can't take another clap on the shoulder from Gideon and just snaps?"

Nissa laughed again. She did want to see them, Gideon and Jace, not necessarily see Jace snap, but it would be—funny? Yes, funny, she decided. Things around Chandra, Jace, and Gideon would be interesting, most likely exhilarating, and sometimes funny. She realized that a separation from the other three Planeswalkers would be just as painful as a departure from Zendikar. That revelation surprised her. It had been a long time since Nissa had felt a deep connection with something other than the world's soul. But there was no denying that now she felt three more bonds. New, but strong. There were three more souls that were counting on her, and millions more that were counting on the four of them together.

"I'm going to go start heating things up for breakfast," Chandra said, getting up. Nissa hadn't realized that the sun had begun to rise while they had been sitting there in the glyph. "Do you want me to bring you anything?"

"No," Nissa breathed in the morning Zendikar air. She wanted to be there herself. "I'll come up and get some in a minute."

"All right," Chandra walked away. "See you there."

"Chandra," Nissa called. Chandra looked back. "Thank you."

Chandra smiled and shrugged. "Don't wait too long to get some grub, or Gideon will eat it all."

Nissa would not wait. She would not wait for the world to heal; it would heal and grow with or without her there to watch it. And there were others who would be there. She thought of Tazri, of Munda, of Seble, and of Kiora.

She unfolded the topmost layer of the silk pouch, revealing the four small seeds. One by one she planted them in the holes she had dug. As she did, she whispered to them of her dreams for the forest they would one day become. She told them of the world they had come from, what Zendikar had been like, and what it had been through. And then she told them of the pyromancer, the telepath, and the fearless leader who had come to save them, who had made this world a safe place for them to grow.

With a final breath, Nissa pressed her palm to the ground and reached into the land; there was one more thing to do. She brushed against the soul of Zendikar. She told it to take care of the seeds. But before it could respond, before it could pull her in, encircle her and hold her close, she lifted her hand, and with it her soul. "I will see you again," she said. "I promise." Then she stood up, moving away from the world she had known and toward the one that was waiting.

Art by Chris Rallis

Halfway to the cook fire, Nissa was ambushed by a harried, impatient stream of consciousness. Nissa! I need to talk to you. The telepath strode into view, chasing his train of his thought. You have to tell me everything you know about Sorin Markov.

Nissa's heart lifted. Yes, she reflected, this was what she was supposed to be doing now, this felt right. She looked into Jace's eyes, smiling. I think it would be easier if I showed you instead. Without hesitation, Jace leapt into her mind.