by Doug Beyer
“She is centuries dead, my lord.”
“Dead? What is death but a reticence to speak with one’s Creator? Her stubbornness will not be tolerated.”
“The signs I’ve culled of late have shown me troubling things. O Progenitus, what do you see behind them?”
“How can I know what you seek, blind as I am? Let us speak no more. I can tell you nothing—not until my wounds are healed.”
“How can I heal you, my lord?”
“I am not whole. I am not all of myself. I must be restored so that I might shine again.”
“Yes, lord.”
“Seek out the …”
“Yes? Seek out what?”
The hydra’s voices deformed strangely. “Seek out the white. …
The heads’ colors changed, blended and warped.
Something is deeply wrong, thought Mayael.
Nicol Bolas, Ajani thought. The being behind it all—a dragon, a creature that didn’t even exist on his world. It made a kind of sense. He looked at the bowl made from oily scales that distorted the light, an artifact created from the scales of a creature from a nearby plane. Ajani knew just where to find such a creature.
For the first time, he was planeswalking under no time constraint, under little emotional duress. He would take it slow. He’d get it right. Maybe he could even aim a little.
He sat in the jungle with his axe across his lap, closed his eyes, and envisioned Jund, the first world to which he had ever planeswalked. He recalled the thick atmosphere, the choking volcanic fumes, the furry goblin-creatures. He envisioned the dragons, enormous beasts of rage swooping down on him, unleashing furious gouts of flame to flay his charred skin from his bones—
He opened his eyes. Maybe I shouldn’t envision the dragons, he thought.
Concentrate.
Jund, a world suffused not only with mana of fire and mana of nature, but an unknown mana of death; a world without the mana of honor and order. It was a world like his own in some respects, if all that was solemn and reverent about Naya had been stripped away, and replaced with an obsession with entropy and decay. It was Naya’s savage, primordial twin.
Concentrate.
What would he find there? Even if he located a dragon, what would he do with that encounter? Look for one with a patch of black scales missing? Ask around for one who knew a Naya cat named Marisi? He was in way over his head. He was about to scour an entire plane for a single being, with no information but a rough description and a scrap of scaly skin.
A sensation of panic grasped his throat, and his heart pounded—Jund was the world to which his nascent abilities had taken him the day that Jazal died. It was the last place he wanted to be again.
Just as Ajani was about to decide that it was all a terrible, terrible idea, he felt the planeswalk begin. He felt something approach him, distant and bright like a spark of fire in the darkness. It was rushing toward him, about to run him over—or was he hurtling toward it? He felt it tug on his soul, felt it draw forth tendrils of his very being. He had the sudden sensation of falling over the cliff again—terror and helplessness in the face of an onrushing, very flat, and very hard destination. He turned his head away, shrinking from the oncoming impact.
No, he thought. It is what I am. I am a planeswalker. I travel worlds. It is what I do.
He turned to the expanding blaze of existence, put his arms out to it, embraced it. Something deep inside his soul acquiesced.
His vision flooded with light as he watched Naya melt away—and in the last moments of his planeswalk, he saw the earth overturn itself. Soundlessly, trees uprooted themselves, and huge slabs of stone upended. His last impression was of lava spouting forth into the Naya sky—an impossible sight, but he saw it char the jungle trees and send up a cloud of black smoke into Naya’s sunny sky.
It must have been his own memories of Jund, he thought, overlapping with the strange sights of his planeswalk—and his own fears of his world’s destruction encroaching on his mind.
But in the fleeting moment as he stepped between worlds, he saw exactly what he had feared to see: the five worlds were one.
Naya had overlapped two other worlds, its rough, green sphere merging with the blue-and-gold heaven of Bant and the fiery hell of Jund. Beyond them, the mostly sea-covered world of Esper linked with the shadow world of Grixis. The five of them formed a kind of irregular chain. In the center, where there was once an eye between them, all five worlds had come together and had—just barely—touched. What destruction all of it was causing, he couldn’t tell. But before Ajani knew it, he was somersaulting into Jund, just as a massive stone pyramid of Naya thrust its way up through Jund’s surface below him.
So much for aiming, he thought.
The white haze over Mayael’s eyes revealed the three heads of Progenitus, twining together and forming a ghastly creature of shadow and death.
“WAR IS UPON US ALL,” the hydra’s voices boomed, vibrating with malevolence. “YOU, THE ELVES, MUST CRUSH ALL THOSE AROUND YOU. LET THE BLOOD OF THE OUTSIDERS RUN IN RIVERS.”
Mayael gasped. “My lord, that is your answer? I don’t understand!”
“WAR IS NIGH. PREPARE YOURSELVES TO INVADE THE FAR SHORES, FOR TONIGHT, THEY INVADE YOURS.”
The hydra disintegrated, bursting into a mass of black beetles. The beetles fell out of shape into a roiling heap, and began to skitter away into the white mist of Mayael’s vision.
The vision shattered. Mayael blinked, and the Whitecover Gaze disappeared, revealing the valley around her. The Relic was a solid, unmoving monolith of stone. Her attendants were all around her, supporting her. Their hands were locked onto her skin, squeezing tightly. Her gown was heavy with sweat.
She heaved a sigh, but it broke hoarsely. She coughed.
“My throat feels sore,” she said.
“You were screaming,” said one of her farseers. Her attendants relaxed their grips on her.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Please gather the warriors. The elves are going to war.” She gathered up her gown.
“War?” an attendant asked. “What did you see, Anima?”
“Horrors,” she said.
That was the last word said on Naya before it became part of Alara once again.
PART
THREE
THE MAELSTROM
As the planes collided, their lines of intersection became long frontiers of strife and ruin. Bant overlapped Esper, which thrust up into Grixis, which spilled into Jund, which blasted through into Naya, which crept into Bant. The aetheric boundaries that had once separated them into distinct planes collapsed silently, buckling in conceptual angles perceptible only to planeswalkers, eventually leaving only a single planar boundary around the unified plane of Alara.
In the heart of Alara, the five planes touched, forming a region composed of all five of the former shards. The interior boundaries had gone, and the terrain crushed in on itself, compressing the landmasses into a dense spiral of matter. The spiral formed a depression that widened and deepened as the planes continued their inchwise inward march.
At the very center of the depression, where lines of the five worlds’ ambient mana converged, a mote of energy flared into life. No bigger than a grain of sand, it hung in the air, sparkling.
Deep inside his Grixis lair, Bolas stopped, his head cocked to one side, as if listening. Something was different. He felt it.
“It’s begun,” he said to the walls around him.
THE BLIND ETERNITIES
Bolas hovered in the chaotic void between the worlds, watching the shards of Alara converge. He had invested years of time in the strange plural plane and a scheme as old as some of his human minions. His plan was not to collapse the five planes—as that had already been destined since the world of Alara was rent asunder centuries ago—but to reap the benefits of their impending conflux for himself. Soon his preparations would pay off, and he could seize the power robbed from him on Dominaria.
He enjoyed watc
hing the planar edges fray, watching the landmasses intersect in untidy ways—the way Grixis intruded into Esper like fangs through skin, or the way Jund’s stifling dystopia heaved lava over the rainforests of Naya. Just the mayhem of the physical convergence would destroy thousands of tiny lives, and that was pleasing. But it was the intersection of the worlds’ mana that was his true goal.
Yes, he could sense the beginnings of it. As the worlds blended into one once more, the limited mana of each shard began to trickle over the borders into the neighboring shards. It wasn’t much—not nearly enough to cause the storm of mana Bolas required—but that was to be expected. The ancient mana obelisks would help focus that energy. With them active, all that was required was a global incentive for Alara’s denizens to use magic in massive amounts.
Bolas was exhausted. Staying too long in the Blind Eternities scoured his scales and drained his vigor. He returned to Grixis to prepare his servants for the next step.
BANT
Rafiq took a deep breath as he sat down in Aarsil the Blessed’s court in Valeron. The merchant Gwafa Hazid was safely in custody, so Rafiq’s mission for Aarsil was complete. But he had the feeling that that was only the first of his unusual tasks for her. The world was changing faster than he could comprehend. He and Mubin sat quietly as the Blessed presided over a meeting in her court.
Aarsil took her seat in the marble hall. Her attendants spread out her gown around her throne, and she was ready to begin.
“Thank you for coming,” said Aarsil. “I bring somber news. Over the last few days, you may have seen the storm brewing on the horizon, or felt the tremors in the earth. Messengers from Jhess have brought strange reports from the coast, which we believe to be related to this phenomenon. The reports are scarcely to be believed. Towers made of an unknown metal have struck their way up through the fields near the coast, they say, killing Mortar-caste by the dozens. Screeching, scaly creatures have flown out of the horizon beyond the sea, devouring our livestock and terrorizing the orchard workers. Humanoids stalk onto Bant’s soil, deploying exotic magics our mages cannot recognize. Truly, a dark time is upon us. Today we hear the words of one who may possess insight into this catastrophe.”
Rafiq and Mubin exchanged a glance.
“Bailiff, if you would,” said Aarsil.
“The court of Valeron recognizes Iama of the Order of the Skyward Eye,” said the bailiff.
“Thank you, your honors,” said Iama.
“So you’re a seer, I’m told?” said Aarsil.
“I am a prophet, yes.”
“Ah. So you presume to know the will of the angels, do you, Sighted-caste?”
“The angels have spoken to all of us, to all the castes. We of the Order of the Skyward Eye have merely interpreted the angels’ message for the people of Bant. All castes, all peoples should understand its importance. You are familiar with Asha’s Prophecy?”
“I’ve heard it, yes.”
“So you know its rhythms, at least. You know how it ends?”
“Yes, I know that it ends with the demons returning, and a war that ends our world.”
“No, not that ends the world, your honor. Not necessarily. The war shall determine our world’s fate, one way or the other. And we need to be sure that we’re prepared. That is the message of the prayer—that we must choose to rise up and defend the blessed land for ourselves.”
Rafiq rose. “May I speak?”
Aarsil nodded.
“The court recognizes Rafiq of the Many,” said the bailiff.
“I don’t know you, prophet, but I know your Prophecy, and I object to your interpretation of it. Your words belittle the angels, our aegis against evil. The events that Aarsil mentions are disturbing, and perhaps a sign that Asha’s time is near. But that’s all the more reason to wait for them to act. Should anything truly dire befall Bant, the angels will rise up and defend us. Our role is to wait for their lead.”
“With all respect due to your station, knight-captain,” said Iama, “I must disagree. The angels will support us in whatever we choose. In the old tongue, they are the bantuthroi, literally the ‘flesh of our volition.’ If we do nothing, neither will they.”
A murmur blew through the assembly.
“Order,” said Aarsil. “That is a radical interpretation, Iama.”
“Your honor, it is what is mandated in the prophecies handed down from knight to knight in our Order, from the angel Asha herself.”
“So you say.”
Iama nodded. “I do. The Prophecy says, further, that our world shall expand, converging with a multitude of lands beyond Bant—which is exactly what we’ve seen coming at the Jhessian coast. The metal towers and strange mages are from a world we call Esper, and Esper is only the first. We know that these worlds will stop at nothing to destroy Bant and our entire way of life.”
GRIXIS
Grixis wasn’t populated entirely by undead horrors. Despite centuries of decay under the withering effects of the plane’s dark mana, some humans still lived—but not many. After the hermitage at Kederekt fell to the undead armies of the demon Malfegor, Torchlight became the last stronghold of living humans.
Morsath Levac peered out the door through the small, round piece of glass. The scouts were late, and on the horizon he could already see the cluster of sickly clouds gathering for that night’s lightning storms. His fingers and jawline were bony, his frame hollowed by the daily trauma of life on Grixis—not like the supple, fleshy cheeks of his young son.
The door hummed gently. Light-bending magic inside the door’s enchanted lens gathered reflections from outside the stronghold and delivered them to Levac’s eyes. The Dregscape looked as bleak as ever, an expanse of flyblown rot the color of gore. Black-feathered kathari shrieked in the distance.
“Levac, anything?” said Captain Haim, coming down the stairs from the tower.
“No, Captain,” said Levac. “No sign of Tomlain or Welly. It’s been three hours; they should have reported in by now.”
“We’ll give them ten more minutes. Then you and I will do a quick circuit, and then we’ll lock up for the night. For now, go be with your wife and son, Levac. I can man the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hey, are the wards active?” “They’re hot. I just checked them.” “Then scoot.”
His last shift. One last guard shift, and then he could take a bit of leave—three whole weeks of nothing but time with Salay and the boy, and if all went well, their newborn. Levac climbed the stairs two at a time.
“Levac!”
It was Captain Haim again.
“What do you want, old man?” he started, but the crash cut him short.
Levac dashed down the steps to see the door blown off its hinges, with Captain Haim prone on the ground before the opening, his face ashen. Two hulking zombies ducked under the threshold and lumbered into the entrance hall. Captain Haim scuttled to his feet and drew his sword, but stood back from the hulks.
Why hadn’t the lens showed him the zombies, Levac thought? Unless—
“Levac, I could use you! I thought you said the wards were—”
“We’ve been breached!” Levac shouted.
Wards exploded in a series of rapid cracks along the edge of the door, arcing blue lightning into the zombies and wracking their bodies rigid. The creatures groaned as foul smoke poured out of their rotting skin. If those corpses had fooled the door lens somehow, at least they hadn’t managed to deactivate the other defenses.
Levac grabbed a sledgehammer from the case and flanked up next to Haim, who didn’t dare sink his steel sword into the electrified undead. Levac reared back for an overhand swing.
“Do it,” said Haim.
Levac brought the mallet down. He crushed the skull of one of the zombies, and it fell. He brought the hammer around again, and smashed through the collarbone of the other. The two of them fell in a heap.
Levac huffed. “How the heck did those things fool the lens?” he said.
“Levac…”
Haim was looking through the doorway, out to the yard surrounding the stronghold. Levac looked.
A sea of undead was amassed around the stronghold: two ranks of bloated fleshbags, a legion of zombie grunts led by a contingent of undead spellcasters, three enormous dreg reavers with their ribcages carrying squads of animated skeletons, and flyers in the form of a cloud of undead drakes and kathari.
“Malfegor …” Haim breathed.
Behind the undead army was a towering, misshapen demon lord with broad, batlike wings, four arms, and the lower body of a huge, black-scaled dragon. It spoke some booming, guttural blasphemy to its troops, and the sea of undead began to advance. Torchlight faced Malfegor, the demon-dragon abomination, the cruelest and most powerful demon lord in all of Grixis. If Malfegor was there in person, then Torchlight was going to fall, and not after a long siege. The hermitage, the last major refuge of humanity, would go that night.
“Get out of here,” said Haim.
Levac stared. His fingers dropped the sledgehammer, and his feet took a single, slow step backward. “Levac, you idiot, run!”
Windows shattered. Wards fired off ineffectually as the undead began pouring through every portal in the stronghold’s ground level. Some sort of undead beast pounced in the open doorway and knocked down Captain Haim. Levac rushed up the stairs as he heard Haim’s screams.
Levac took one final look back, and regretted it. Haim’s entrails flew every which way as the beast and three other zombies feasted on his abdomen, while he screamed and tried to beat on them with his fists.
Levac took the stairs three at a time.
“Salay!” he bellowed over the popping of the wards. “Salay!”
Other living humans streamed past him on the stairwell, carrying rusted swords and shields. Levac said silent goodbyes to them as they passed.
He reached the landing. His wife Salay regarded him from their vestibule. She would have looked waiflike with her concave cheeks, but for her pregnant belly.
