Alara Unbroken

by Doug Beyer

  Banat frowned. “This is very serious. Do you have any evidence of this?”

  “Send your scouts to the east, into the valley. They’ll see the advancing army there. They intend to attack on the anniversary of the breaking of the Coil.”

  “You risk death by coming here,” said Ruki. “Why would you warn us?”

  “Because I believe that Marisi isn’t actually after Qasal.” She produced Jazal’s documents and slid them across the table. Ambassador Banat began to study them. “He’s after … the obelisk.”

  Their faces showed surprise.

  “What do you know of the obelisk?” asked Banat.

  “Nothing, really,” said Zaliki. “My … kha, Jazal, was studying these prophecies before his recent death.” She indicated the documents in Banat’s hands. “They have similar elements across several races and cultures. They all mention an apocalyptic prophecy, and they all mention a spire of golden stone. Jazal’s notes indicated that he believed this edifice was here, in Qasal. Was he right? Do you know what he meant?”

  Banat looked at Ruki.

  “There is no golden spire in Qasal,” she said, her voice like ancient hinges. “Unless he simply means the Tower of Qasal.”

  “It’s a symbol of our Cloud Nacatl culture. And now Marisi has come back to destroy it,” said Ambassador Banat. “Which will make these prophecies come true.”

  “And which will trigger war all over again, among the nacatl and across all of Naya,” said Zaliki.

  BANT

  Aarsil the Blessed laughed uncomfortably. “I admit that I generally don’t understand rhox humor. You want to what?”

  “Dig up the Twelve Trees of Valeron,” said Mubin. “I know it’s a big favor. But I—”

  “It’s not a favor, Mubin.” She was angry. “It’s sacrilege. You know as much as anybody the history of these trees. Their roots are Valeron’s own. They hold inside them the very pith of our heritage. Like I said, I don’t understand this joke of yours.”

  “It’s not a joke,” said Mubin. “I believe that the war effort needs what’s buried under them.”

  “What’s buried under them? You mean the myth of the Sword of Asha?”

  “It’s no myth.” “What?”

  “Now hold on,” interrupted Aarsil’s Order of the Skyward Eye advisor. “Aarsil, this is obviously a trick—”

  “You stay out of this,” said Mubin.

  “Don’t talk like that to him,” said Aarsil. “Wanath has been my trusted advisor for several years now. He’s a historian and a scholar of archaeology in his own right. He’s studied the Twelve Trees his entire life. He would know whether there are fragments of a sword buried under there.”

  Mubin glared at the advisor and turned back to Aarsil. His best hope was the direct approach. “Highness, I believe that the Order of the Skyward Eye has been propagating a campaign of deception across Bant for years. They’ve been manipulating our traditions, introducing falsehoods into our histories, and backing up their claims with forged documents and relics.”

  “Preposterous!” scoffed Wanath.

  “In particular,” continued Mubin, “they’ve obscured the part of the Asha parable that matters most to Bant’s survival against the other planes—that the holy Sword of Asha, with which the archangel slew the demon Malfegor, lies in twelve pieces beneath the Twelve Trees. We have always believed the fragments of the sword to be mythical, and simply symbolic of the twelve virtues held sacred in Valeron. But I believe that it may be literally true. I found this.”

  Mubin produced a stone fragment, a relic he had taken from the ruins at Giltspire, and a prayer book, the tome given to him by the cleric who had watched over his recuperation.

  “This is a fragment of Giltspire, gathered just after it collapsed. And this is a book of prayer from an Akrasan cleric. Each has been modified. I cross-referenced the changes that were made to each one, and used them to decode each other. The changes have downplayed the truth of the story of the sword, and emphasized the need for global war in times of strife.”

  Aarsil the Blessed looked at her advisor.

  “We’re already at war,” said Mubin, “so that can’t be helped anymore. What we can do is reforge the sword, the artifact that was erased from Bant’s records, to have a weapon against the evils that face us.”

  “That is a bold theory, and a very serious accusation against the Order of the Skyward Eye,” said Aarsil.

  Mubin held his breath. If she relented, he believed he could help win the war that threatened all of Bant. If she didn’t …

  “I’d like you to leave, and never return to my palace ever again,” said the Blessed.

  Guards took hold of the reins of Mubin’s leotau.

  A smug smile crossed the face of Aarsil’s Skyward Eye advisor.

  NAYA

  The breeze was cool. It rustled the folds of Zaliki’s cloak. She stood before the outskirts of Qasal, its mighty main tower glowing in the sun.

  Before her were thousands of nacatl: Marisi’s army. Marisi himself was nowhere to be seen, if it was truly him, but she knew he would be down there somewhere.

  Zaliki approached. The breeze gossiped excitedly through the treetops all around them. Not a soldier moved on either side.

  “Marisi!” she cried. “I call you out!”

  There was no movement, only row after row of the eyes of her fellow Wild Nacatl.

  “Marisi! You and I have a personal matter to settle. That matter is Jazal!”

  Banners flapped in the breeze. Only after several long scans of the assembled army did she see movement. Nacatl warriors parted to make way for someone.

  Marisi stepped forward. He was in war garb from head to foot, and carried a spear decorated with the teeth of behemoths.

  “Hello, child,” Marisi said.

  “Do you know who I am?” Zaliki asked.

  “Is that you, child? Are you the young shaman of Jazal’s pride?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you were my servant for an important task.”

  Her eyes were cold. “I was.”

  “You did the right thing, then. You didn’t realize the enormity of what you had done, but I’m here to tell you now that it pushed the needle of history. Your actions resonated through this entire world—and, I’ve come to realize, much, much more.”

  “I was a fool to plant that artifact,” Zaliki cried. “I was a fool to believe in you, and your message of freedom. I was a fool to distrust Jazal, and his belief that the sundering of our race was a mistake. It was worse than a mistake, though, wasn’t it? It was cold calculation. Your lies tore our people apart, Marisi, to spread hate and distrust among us. Today I’m here to stop them from tearing apart our world.”

  “Child, you still don’t realize the role you’ve played,” Marisi said. “You don’t know how proud I am of you. Look around you. Two armies, ready to reenact a bloody battle a generation old. It all repeats, child. An escalation of power. A breaking of stone. I know you’re bitter, but you shouldn’t blame yourself. No one succeeds who stands in the way of prophecy.”

  “There’s no prophecy, Marisi,” Zaliki said. “This is not going to happen again. Not this time. Not with me here.”

  “I respect your bravery, and your misguided attempt to redeem your actions,” Marisi answered. “But it’s not up to you, child. Nor is it up to me. We are but pieces in a grand game. We’re here to play our role today, nothing more. I can say from experience—pretending otherwise only makes it worse.”

  “I believed in you, old man,” said Zaliki. “I believed in your name. I believed in your message of freedom, as did my entire generation. How could you betray that trust?”

  “Freedom is the luxury of the strong and the powerful,”

  said Marisi. “I’m afraid we are neither. Goodbye, young Zaliki.”

  With that, Marisi signaled to his Wild Nacatl. Zaliki turned and signaled to the Cloud Nacatl. A terrible roar went up, and the two armies launched at each other.
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  GRIXIS

  He may only have been a glorified messenger, but Kaeda the aven didn’t take his orders lightly. Rafiq himself had given him his mission, to fly back to Bant ahead of them and warn them of the coming of Malfegor’s army. And he was determined to carry them out, no matter what might happen to him.

  He outpaced the undead army rather easily. Some casters fired spells at him, and a small flock of diseased, black-feathered aven creatures tried to get in his way. But both attacks failed. He was a military-trained, thrice-decorated soldier of Valeron; they were half-living wretches whose minds were chained to a lord of evil. Furthermore, he found that the vigor of life and the power of his devotion to his cause were by themselves enough to give him an edge against any Grixis combatants he faced. The grim legion was relentless and brutal, but they had no spirit in them to fuel their might.

  Kaeda cut a straight line from Grixis to Bant, flying as fast and as true as he could manage. Lightning flashed in the black clouds above him, occasionally buffeting him with booms of thunder. The gloom of Grixis faded into a front of drizzly clouds from Esper; he kept that front on his right side, and flew. He flew for hours, which stretched into relentless days. His sense of time dulled. His pinion joints ground themselves raw.

  When he saw a glow ahead of him, he felt a flood of relief—finally, he was in range of his bright home of Bant. He summoned up the last of his reserves, and flew straight for the light.

  But something was wrong. The closer he flew toward the light, the more he realized that the light did not come from Bant. A sphere of swirling energy, the size of a small mountain, glowed ahead of him. As he approached it, he felt the air currents change. They spun around the glowing globe like a funnel, pulling him down to its center. Flares of energy exploded outward fitfully, threatening to singe his feathers.

  Wearily, Kaeda veered away from the maelstrom, trying to steer clear of it, but its irrepressible pull threatened to draw him into its chaotic center. He tired quickly, and wondered whether he would just fall in and die.

  “Kaeda, you must warn Bant,” said Rafiq’s voice in his memory. “I’m counting on you. We’ll be there as soon as we can …”

  The aven found new resolve and beat his weary wings through the pain. Slowly, he dragged his flight path out of the maelstrom and escaped from it. He was doing it. He was going to deliver the message, and fulfill his duty.

  As he passed around the sphere, he saw the light beyond it. The natural sunlight looked so beautiful that he was surprised he ever mistook the maelstrom for it. He flew in Bant’s direction gratefully.

  But with his back to the maelstrom, a flare of energy erupted from the vortex and lanced Kaeda’s wing, utterly destroying it. As he plummeted out of the sky, Kaeda shrieked in pain.

  NAYA

  Zaliki couldn’t stop the battle from happening, but maybe she could stop Marisi from destroying the Tower of Qasal.

  With a thrust of Marisi’s spear, his warriors leaped toward her with their swords high.

  She had never thought she’d have to use magic on her own people, but she had no choice. Zaliki called on the jungle corridors of her home, which filled her with nature’s strength and fury. Her arms cut a circular hole in the air, and out of the circle tumbled a torrent of vicious timber wolves that circled around her, forming a living barrier between the Wild Nacatl and herself. At her command, the mongels pounced, each tearing into a nearby warrior. Meanwhile, she focused her energies on Marisi.

  Marisi leaped forward and stabbed the point of his spear right at her. She countered with a spell that caused a sudden burst of growth in the underbrush, entangling his spear in vines and absorbing the force of his attack. The vines devoured the spear, crushing the handle into splinters and pulling the weapon down into the earth.

  Weaponless, Marisi launched forward and tackled Zaliki. She controlled her fall and rolled with the impact, throwing him off her. She tried to summon a barrier made of brambles between them, but he was too quick and grabbed her leg. She stumbled as her feet were pulled out from under her, and she slammed into the ground.

  “Give up, little cub,” growled Marisi. “I’m twice the fighter you are.”

  She rolled over and bared her teeth. “But only half the warrior,” she replied. With that, she uttered a spell.

  Zaliki’s leg grew in Marisi’s claws—and every other part of her body grew along with it. Her body expanded, unfolded, fueled by magic of uncontrolled growth. Soon she was the size of a giant, and Marisi had lost his hold on her. A solid kick to his chest sent him flying. She stood and towered over the heads of both armies.

  “Now come here, you,” she boomed, and reached down to grab Marisi.

  Marisi somersaulted out of the way of Zaliki’s giant claws and ran into the thick of the battle, dodging sword blows and spear thrusts. Zaliki lumbered after him, occasionally crushing combatants underfoot. The old warrior was too quick—she couldn’t move her enormous limbs fast enough to follow him through the forest. It was going to take more magic.

  Zaliki reached out with her mind to all nearby available sources of natural mana. Her mind immediately touched a powerful source nearby, and she felt a surge of power—why hadn’t she felt this before? Instinctively she opened herself to it, letting the mana blossom inside her. With it she fueled a massive spell that summoned a charging gargantuan onto the battlefield, sending it directly at Marisi. The gargantuan shook the earth with its galloping footfalls, and warriors from both armies dove out of its path. In seconds the gargantuan head-butted Marisi with its bony facial plates, sending the cat flying. Marisi fell to the earth with a thud, and the beast slowed and stopped over his limp body.

  Zaliki had time to stride over to Marisi and pick him up.

  She held the nacatl up above her head in one hand, and looked down at all the warriors below. “Warriors! Stop this battle now! Marisi is a liar, and a warmongering fraud!”

  The shouts in response were not what she wanted to hear.

  “Kill the traitor!”

  “In Marisi’s name!”

  “Destroy her!”

  One voice she couldn’t hear over the shouts was Ambassador Banat, yelling at her from the ground. “Zaliki, don’t!” he cried. “No more! No more magic! You’re destroying it!”

  It would take one more display of force, Zaliki thought. She had to show her Wild Nacatl that their leader was mortal, and show them how serious she was about her cause. If she had to martyr Marisi, so be it.

  “I believed in you,” she said to the nacatl in her hand.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Marisi.

  Zaliki drew on the powerful source of mana again, a dramatic draught of the energy. She channeled it into a spell to augment her own strength sevenfold. Muscles rippled throughout her already giant-sized body. She brought her arms back as if to clap her hands, and then brought her palms together, smashing Marisi between them.

  The crowd gasped in unison.

  Then, behind her, there was an explosive sound of stone cracking.

  She turned to see the Tower of Qasal fracturing and crumbling apart.

  NAYA

  Bolas perched on a Naya mountaintop, surveying the world around him in a state of boredom. For a twenty-thousand-year-old dragon, he had precious little patience. Where was the signal flare? That aging leonin hero, Marisi, should have signaled him for their rendezvous. Bolas had seen nothing from him. The lack of information that presented was unsettling. Without his minions checking in with him, he had no eyes or ears on the planes other than Grixis.

  Perhaps the attack on Qasal hadn’t gone well? If Marisi had failed at Qasal, then that meant the obelisk of Naya might not be free and functional. That would mean he would have to find and condition an all-new minion on Naya, and that could take days or weeks—time he didn’t have.

  There was one way to find out. He closed his eyes and reached out with his inner senses. The planeswalker spark inside him connected with dozens of mana sources all over the pl
ane, large and small. Gradually he perceived a web of interconnected fonts of mana glittering in his mind’s eye. He followed along them, looking for new sources of mana. He soon found it—a glaring new pillar of mana generation near the shrines of Qasal. That was it—the obelisk of Naya. It was active. Bolas could see that it radiated stable mana to the areas physically near it, but also that it channeled mana elsewhere in a steady stream. It was that stream of mana energy that made him smile.

  Marisi had missed his meeting. That meant he was dead, or ready to accept death once Bolas tracked him down and punished him. But he appeared to have succeeded anyway.

  Bolas summoned up a bit of the jagged local mana and planeswalked out into the Blind Eternities.

  THE MAELSTROM

  When Kaeda, the aven of Bant, awoke, his first thought was of his mission. How close was the Grixis army? Had they already passed him?

  There was no sign of them, not along the route anyway. He must have been unconscious only for a short time.

  He looked back, and saw the swirling maelstrom. Was it his imagination, or was it even bigger than before?

  His body was a cage of agony. He had tumbled as he had fallen out of the sky, and the gusts around the maelstrom had thrown him a wind shear that had sent him sideways, so he had fallen awkwardly. Not since he was a fledgling had he fallen so badly. Thanks to his light bones, he hadn’t crushed himself in the impact, but everything was thoroughly bruised, and his left talon was twisted. His tentative attempt to move his wing was punished by pain. The wing was ruined; there was nothing coming out of that shoulder but a blackened branch of bone. There would be no flying out of there.

  With supreme effort, he lurched onto his good leg. He tested himself with a step, which ended in a graceless limp. He lurched a few more steps, wincing in pain, and fell.

  He pushed himself up again. Someone still had to warn Bant of Malfegor’s approach. If I have to stagger for miles on foot to do it, he thought, then that’s how it would have to be done.