Teferi and Windgrace waited silently as they bathed in the spectral light from the hole in the sky. The meaning of Freyalise’s last sending was unclear to Teferi, her actions closed to his perception. What he could perceive was his intuitive bond with the Skyshroud rift. Both phenomena were now seething in unison, one waxing and the other waning as the energy within them pulsed back and forth. For him, there were no other fissures, no larger network. The tumultuous exchange between these two was all he knew, as this mismatched pair of Phyrexian-born rifts threatened to tear the entire multiverse wide open.
He felt fresh waves of alien cold flow down from the disk of crackling light, driving the unnatural winter’s roots deeper into Urborg. He saw shining new armies of cold-weather Phyrexian footsoldiers tumbling through the night air and materializing at the foot of the mountain. By the hundreds they came, those that dropped disappearing under the icy crust that had formed over Urborg and bursting free to prowl the marsh and prey on its inhabitants.
Teferi fought the urge to ask Windgrace for details. He would know Freyalise’s fate soon enough, and perhaps his own. Either the patron of Skyshroud would seal the rift, which Teferi would sense as it happened, or she would not…in which case he would see the explosive effects of her failure close-up.
Windgrace’s ears twitched. “Your Ghitu partner has returned.”
“Jhoira? Where?”
“She is at Venser’s workshop.” Windgrace’s chest rumbled, and a soft growl crept up his throat. “She came by way of Venser’s machine.”
“Is Venser with her? Or Jodah?”
“No.”
“Can you bring her here?”
“Easily.” Windgrace’s tail lashed.
Teferi waited, then said, “Will you?”
“No. Now be silent.” The panther’s pupils narrowed to vertical, black slashes. “Freyalise has begun in earnest.”
“Please help her, my lord.”
“She has not asked for help.”
“Then help yourself.” Teferi gestured to the rift above, to the frigid air and metal monsters pouring down. “Close that doorway once and for all.”
Windgrace said nothing, though his fur bristled in the wind.
* * *
—
Jhoira was on her feet and partway out of the control rig before the ambulator’s yellow glow fully receded. She was not willing to bring the machine so close to the rift, but now she was faced with a far more mundane problem: She didn’t know where to go. She needed to find Windgrace, or at least Teferi, if she was to do any good. The ambulator could take her to the edge of the Stronghold rift, but that was all. She had neither the knowledge nor the power to change what was happening on her own.
She stepped back from Venser’s door to get a clear view of the disk. The black wedge that was the Stronghold gleamed along its edges in the arcane glow. Jhoira looked higher, then shielded her eyes to cut back on the glare. Two familiar figures floated between the mountain and the rift, stiff and anxious as if awaiting bad news.
Jhoira turned back to the ambulator. It was not designed to fly or hover, but it could take her to where the two planeswalkers were. Once there she would either have to rely on their power to keep the chair aloft or ambulate back to the ground as soon as she started falling. She paused only to calculate how much time she’d have, then dashed back up the steps that led to the dais.
“Jhoira, my friend. I’ve missed you.”
The voice was familiar, but she had heard it mimicked too recently to trust her ears. She turned toward Venser’s hut, not wanting to believe her eyes, expecting another trick or diversion to make her drop her guard.
Karn stood between her and the door to Venser’s workshop, his hands clasped behind his back. The finely engraved Thran character on his chest shone in the dim light. His heavy features were open and joyful as best they could be. He seemed solid and relaxed.
“I heard you calling me,” Karn said. “I am sorry I did not answer sooner.” He glanced up past the mountain’s peak. “Is that what you’re dealing with?”
“I was recently attacked by a Karn impostor,” Jhoira said, “a mind reader who used my own recollections to fool me. I need to know you are who you appear to be.”
Karn brought his arms around and stroked his broad chin. “Easy enough,” he said. “Though I suppose any proof I offer will immediately be nullified by your suspicion that I found it in your thoughts.”
“You can see the quandary.” Jhoira stepped closer to the edge of the dais, well within reach of the chair and its controls. He certainly had Karn’s bearing.
The heavy, silver figure shimmered and appeared beside Jhoira on the dais. He reached out his powerful arms and swept her up to his breast, her toes three feet from the ground. The golem swiveled his face down so that his nose and Jhoira’s almost touched.
“I would never harm you, Jhoira.” The iron grip around her eased, and Karn set her gently on the platform. “If you don’t believe that, you may run. Even better, stand where you are. I will take my leave.” He stepped past her, planting one massive foot on the soil of Urborg, and Jhoira said, “Stop.”
The silver man paused. He twisted at the waist and smiled up to her.
Jhoira exhaled. “It’s good to see you, Karn.”
Karn nodded. “It’s been far too long. But there’ll be time for reunions later.” He gestured up to the rift. “What is that?”
A familiar sense of comfort settled over Jhoira. Karn was Karn, practical, focused, ready and willing to help.
“I don’t know exactly,” Jhoira said. “But they are scattered all over the globe.”
Karn stared unblinking into the disk. “This one’s very unstable. Is that Teferi I see?”
“Yes. And Lord Windgrace. Can you take us there?”
“Of course.” Karn extended his arm, inviting Jhoira to step closer. As she did, the silver man flinched and jerked his head to the west. “Wait,” he said. “Something terrible is happening.”
“Where?” Jhoira said.
Karn spoke without moving his head. “Keld,” he said. “Skyshroud Forest.”
* * *
—
Freyalise laughed, exultant in her restored power. Her woody tower was now as tall as Keld’s mightiest peak and one hundred yards at the base. The vines had stopped their furious growth and hardened, wrapping so tightly together that they became indistinguishable from a single massive tree.
If it existed, Freyalise still could not see the upper edge of the Skyshroud rift, not even from this lofty perch. On her way up she had exercised her regained strength by blasting wave after wave of slivers and Phyrexians into cinders and slag. Her flames were green and fat with mana, which flowed back into the tree and up to be reused at Freyalise’s pleasure.
Dear lady, came the Weaver King’s familiar voice. I cannot imagine what you intended, but I have to say, ‘well done.’ You’ve converted an entire forest into a single tree. It will be a fitting monument under which to bury you.
“Begone, filth.” Freyalise stared up at the endless walls of fog on either side of her.
But I have so much to say before I go—
Begone. Freyalise’s thoughts lashed out like a barbed whip. She registered the rewarding sound of the Weaver King yelping in pain. Now.
I will go, leaf witch. The mad harlequin’s voice was gone, leaving a dark and ragged whisper. But I will not stop, will never stop. The slivers will breed, the Phyrexians will build, and I will make sure every last one of them comes screaming for your blood.
Spurred by their master’s anger, the horde screeched and roared as they redoubled their efforts to reach the top of Freyalise’s tree. The patron of Skyshroud drew breath to send another scalding threat directly to the Weaver King’s mind, but the malign presence skittered off into the mass of seething monsters below.
“Irritant.” Freyalise paused to proof her mind against any further thought-to-thought contact. She was through with distractions, through
with counsel, through with the endless chatter that barraged her everywhere she went. The next person who came to deter her from her path would have to do it in person, and wade through a swarm of slivers to do it.
Freyalise felt the presence of the madman’s horde climbing ever closer. She focused on the mana she had, the mana in the tree, and her eyes flashed. A sickening sound rose up in a circle around the platform on which she stood, and she imagined the countless bodies now impaled on the long, wooden thorns that had just erupted along the tree’s upper third. She raised her clenched fist and tightened it, igniting the thorns in an extended series of colorful explosions.
The planeswalker swooned for a moment, overtaken by a surge of weakness. No, she thought. Not so soon. I was just starting to enjoy myself.
Freyalise shrugged, shaking off her selfish impulses. As gratifying as it would be to savage each and every one of the beasts that the Weaver King promised to send for her blood, it was a joy she had to forbear. For there was another reason she had closed herself off to the outside world, that she could not bear to think of what Teferi would say when she followed his example.
She had watched him in Shiv, so she knew what he had done. His effort shamed her, and not only because it was successful. His vast experience with temporal forces gave him information and insight that she didn’t have and didn’t begrudge. No, it wasn’t Teferi’s superior grasp of the situation that shamed her. It was his bravery. He had gone into the Shivan rift prepared to die, intending to do so to accomplish his goals, and it was that boldness and dedication that put the lie to her own. She had thought she was willing to do whatever it took to preserve Skyshroud, had gone so far as to chose it over her own tribe in Fyndhorn and her beloved favorites in Llanowar. She felt more responsible for Skyshroud and its strangely evolved culture because neither had existed on Dominaria before she brought them here. The elves of Fyndhorn and Llanowar had been an uninterrupted part of Dominaria since the dawn of history. They had strong roots, so reluctantly she had left them to fend for themselves as she tended to her newest and most tentative bloom.
As she watched Teferi spend every drop of his power, she realized that she had been wrong. She was not willing to die for Skyshroud, not even willing to diminish herself for it. Her love of the natural order caused her to allow hardship and misery to be heaped upon her transplanted children, and it had almost caused her to allow their destruction.
Freyalise recovered her balance and stood up straight. She saw it clearly now. None of this was natural, not the first arrival of Skyshroud or the doom that now threatened it. She had been trying to combat the danger through vital means, by encouraging strength, tenacity, and magical ability in her followers. Such a course could never hope to succeed against these rifts and the capricious horrors they unleashed.
Temporal manipulation had always been anathema to Freyalise, and she needed no other confirmation than what she had seen in this valley. The elves of Skyshroud could not be expected to thrive under such a burden. No one could. It fell to their patron to protect them, and now, at long last, she would.
Freyalise’s body shifted from pale, fair skin to a swirling, kaleidoscopic glow of green and red shapes. Her eyes vanished behind a curtain of stars that cascaded from her lashes with each blink like glittering dust from a moth’s wings. Her gown shriveled in the heat and Freyalise floated off the circular, wooden platform, her naked body sheathed in a skin-tight cocoon of raw eldritch fury.
Windgrace, she called. I cannot hear you, but listen to me: The Tolarians are correct. We are the only ones who can save our people and only according to their methods. Skyshroud is gone but for a single tree. I will do what I can to see that the rift and the Phyrexians and the winter claim no more victims here. I am honored to have fought by your side. Fare well, Master of Urborg.
The sides of the Skyshroud rift grew thicker and more opaque as Freyalise’s body changed. Her face and head remained as they were, a sculptor’s study in feminine beauty wrapped in a seething skin of primal force, but her body shifted and merged into a flat, whiplike cone. The cone shot up into her skull, and Freyalise’s head threw off white light bright enough to singe the wood below her.
Her mind was all that remained, her unconquerable will and all the incalculable power she could muster. On the tree a new surge of slivers and Phyrexians had reached the summit, but they could only screech and wail and cover their smoking eyes, helpless in the bright fury that was Freyalise.
Up, she thought. She was a creature of the soil, but she would not lower herself to digging in it. She would go out and find the upper reaches of the rift. She would attack it at its summit and drag it down upon itself, pulling it inside out as she had her gloves. She would stuff it into itself until it was more manageable, open wide, and swallow the damned thing whole.
Now. Freyalise struck skyward, the last Skyshroud tree dwindling to a pinprick below. Her head was a comet, her body the tail. She cut a glittering path through the angry, darkened clouds, boiling away the smoke and filthy moisture around her to create a circular canal of clean, clear air between herself and the ground.
There. The sheer, smoky walls softened and diffused into nothing several miles above Dominaria. There was no edge for her to latch on to, no seam that she could grasp, but she knew her upward journey had come to an end. She felt the rift clutching for her like a thing alive, like a hungry baby bird snapping for the worm in its mother’s beak.
I know you, she said. I’ve known you all my life. You’re what happens when magic is turned against Gaea, against life in all its myriad forms and in contravention of the roles they were meant to play. Today I am life’s champion. I abhor you. I will destroy you.
Freyalise arced up over the rift’s bounding walls, curved back down without losing momentum, and slammed into the top of the western wall. The ghost-gray fog received her, contained her, gathered and thickened around her. Then the rift swelled like a blister and burst as Freyalise tore free. She continued on to the opposite wall and plunged in again. It churned for a moment, then expanded and broke open.
Freyalise continued to zigzag from one end of the rift to the other, blowing holes in its substance as she descended and weakening its structure. Each time she emerged, the fury around her dimmed. Each time she plunged in it took her longer to fight her way out.
The comet with Freyalise’s face wavered as it crossed the distance between the rift walls. Was it enough? Had she damaged it sufficiently to see things through? She hoped so. She had reached the limit of what she could do in this realm.
Hanging in midair for a moment, Freyalise drew in the last of the mana she had reclaimed from Skyshroud. She had no more regrets. She had no more hesitation. She had no long list of memories to catalogue, no peers to bid farewell. She was Freyalise and she had always walked alone.
The comet opened its eyes and mouth wide. Freyalise sang as she slammed into the rift one final time, a single, clear, sustained note that would always haunt the minds of those who heard it and survived.
She released all of her power in a single, explosive burst, choking the rift, overwhelming it with a feast far too rich and complicated for such a low and bestial appetite. The half-solid walls of the Skyshroud rift bulged outward, then toppled back in upon themselves. A green ring of flames blew outward from the planeswalker’s location, uncannily silent. The world groaned as its terrible wound was healed.
Far below, the Skyshroud tree stood covered in countless skittering bodies. The tightly braided wood shifted, creaking so loudly it shattered several Phyrexian heads. Then it too erupted in a powerful blast of silent, emerald fire.
Debris rained down on the remains of Skyshroud. The tunnel Freyalise had carved through the clouds remained, their sooty gray billowing respectfully around the column of clear air. Starlight shone straight down to the forest floor, unimpeded by bough or fog, and it glinted off the surface of a small, silver hand mirror lying among the shreds of bone, wood, and metal.
Freyalise
was gone. The rift was gone. And the valley that once housed Skyshroud now sat empty, silent, and still.
Teferi silently cheered when he felt the Skyshroud rift implode, but he paled when the Stronghold phenomenon almost doubled in size and ferocity. His apprehension grew as Windgrace turned on him in a fury.
“Freyalise is dead,” he said. “She followed your path and paid an even higher price.”
“Dead,” Teferi said. He neither felt surprise nor tried to feign it. “As I thought I would be.” He blinked. “But now is the time for you to act as well, my lord. The Skyshroud rift is sealed. You can compound that success by sealing this one, and quickly.”
Windgrace stubbornly crossed his arms.
“My lord,” Teferi said. “What more evidence do you need? Freyalise was successful—”
“You’ve a strange definition of success,” Windgrace snarled.
“Then deny the evidence before you.” Teferi pointed to the rift. “See how it roils? The rifts are a network, Windgrace. They are connected. Especially yours and Freyalise’s. Closing one does not disperse the energy it contained but only redirects it to the rest of the network. Don’t you understand? Everything that was there is coming here.” Teferi threw his arms wide. “Everything.”
Windgrace opened his mouth to speak, but another voice interrupted him.
“It’s true, my lord. Forgive my sudden intrusion. My name is Karn.”
Teferi’s eyes widened, and he struggled to turn quickly, hampered by his levitation spell’s slow, lazy speed. Karn was there, every gorgeous, massive, silver inch of him. Jhoira was with him, floating safely in a bubble of Karn’s magic.
“Shovelhead,” Teferi said. He beamed in spite of himself, in spite of the dire circumstances. It was always good to see a friend.
Karn nodded to him. “Teferi. We have much to discuss.”
“In time,” Windgrace said. He rushed through the air, his arms folded and his spine stiff, until he was directly in between Karn and Teferi. “First you will talk to me.”
Planar Chaos Page 24
