Alara Unbroken

by Doug Beyer

  BANT

  Aarsil the Blessed came down to the palace courtyard in her sleeping robe. It was late at night in Valeron. Crickets chirped, and the stars shone in constellations shaped like angels. She wouldn’t have been awake at this hour except that Aarsil’s guards had called her. They had detained a man, a human of Mortar caste, who looked hysterical.

  Aarsil rubbed her eyes in annoyance. “All right, I’m here, I’m awake. What is it?”

  “This man says there’s an emergency,” said a guard.

  “Highness, please, I beg your help. I’m the wagon driver for Sir Mubin. It’s Mubin, Highness. He sent away your guards, and opened the gates—the trees. Please come to the court grounds, quickly!”

  She was fully awake. “What in Asha’s name has he done?”

  They raced out to the courtyard of the Twelve Trees. Aarsil gasped in horror, covering her hand with her mouth.

  The tremendous roots of one of the majestic trees lay exposed, twisted and clogged with mud. The branches of the tree lay along the ground, with the trunk lashed to Mubin’s wagon team of four mighty leotau.

  And down in the pit where the tree’s roots had been torn free lay Mubin, covered in dirt. He had a network of ropes wrapped around him, and there was a shovel to one side. He sat in the mud of the pit he had created, cradling a metallic object in his arms.

  “Mubin!” shouted Aarsil.

  The rhox knight looked up. He held up the object he was holding. The light of the stars glinted hard and true in the edge of a shard of steel.

  “I found one of them,” Mubin said. “It’s a fragment of the Sword of Asha.”

  Aarsil’s Skyward Eye advisor came running up. “What is going on?” he cried.

  Aarsil turned to him, a grim vein bulging in her forehead. “Go and fetch twenty Mortar caste, ropes, and a dozen more steeds. And a blacksmith.”

  Aarsil’s face was a storm of concentration. Her brow furrowed in rage, and she opened her mouth to say something—but then she closed it again. She looked at the glinting metal of the sword fragment.

  “What’s he done?” the advisor whispered. “What do you mean, you want … You’re not going to—”

  “Go and fetch what Mubin needs,” said Aarsil the Blessed. “Now.”

  GRIXIS

  Ajani, Kresh, and the warriors moved through Grixis as secretly as they could. It wasn’t easy—to the blood-tuned senses of the creatures of Grixis, their life force glowed like a beacon. After a rash of battles with the undead, rot and ichor clung to them. But they marched on.

  “Cat-man, you’re unstoppable,” said Kresh in tired admiration. “You haven’t rested in days. We’ve run out of clean food, and you’re withering away, and yet you walk on.”

  “I can’t stop,” said Ajani. “ The killer must be nearby. I’m smelling the same smell as the creatures that killed my brother. We’re almost there, I think. I can feel it.”

  “We might be,” said Kresh. “Or we might be lost in the land of the dead. Everything here smells like this. I support your mission of vengeance, I do. It’s every man’s right to die in battle, slumped over the corpse of his hated enemy. But this is no way to go, for us or for you. I won’t watch you die of walking around.”

  Ajani’s teeth showed as he spoke. “If you want to leave, go ahead.”

  “That’s not what my words meant, and I think you know it. I am going to see you through to the end of this thing if it kills me. If you can’t stand some sense talked into—”

  “Shh,” said Ajani.

  “You don’t shush me!”

  “Quiet!” hissed Ajani. “Do you hear something? Do you hear wings?”

  “Of course. We’ve heard those black-feathered birdmen for days,” muttered Kresh.

  “No, he’s right,” whispered one of the warriors. “I hear it too. It sounds like—”

  “A dragon’s wings,” said Ajani.

  BANT

  The soldier on lookout duty at a Bant gatehouse put down her spyglass in order to report.

  “Sir, it’s an aven. He’s one of ours,” she said.

  “And he is on foot?” said the gate-captain incredulously.

  “Yes,” said the lookout. “He’s in bad shape.”

  “It could be a trap. But I want you to find out, and quickly.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The aven had collapsed by the time the guard tower opened its front gate. Two soldiers and a cleric rushed out to the fallen bird-man.

  “This is no trap,” said one of the soldiers. “This is Kaeda. He was part of the mission of Knight-General Rafiq.”

  The cleric immediately began chanting. The aven’s wounds closed, but the wing remained destroyed. The aven stopped breathing.

  “I’m sorry,” said the cleric after a moment. “He’s gone.”

  “Poor devoted scout,” said one of the soldiers. “Look at that wing. What happened to him?” “He’s got something with him.”

  “It’s a scroll.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Just this: ‘DEMONS AT GILTSPIRE. FOUR DAYS.’ ”

  “Let’s tell the gate-captain.”

  GRIXIS

  A dragon flew silhouetted against the lightning-torn sky of Grixis, as dark as shadow. They had seen no other dragons in Grixis at all, and Ajani wondered whether it could be the master of Rakka and of Marisi, the very dragon he sought. Kresh and the other Jund warriors found cover under the bones of some long-dead beast, having met several dragons in their day.

  As the dragon flew overhead, Ajani realized it didn’t have the light-distorting black scales of the dragonscale bowl. It was red-scaled, with a characteristic woven pattern to the scales on its stomach. This wasn’t the dragon that had caused Jazal’s death. In fact, the dragon looked strangely familiar.

  “Karrthus,” said one of the warriors in awe.

  “He’s a mighty hellkite from our world,” said another. “What’s he doing here?”

  It was the same dragon Ajani had seen on Jund right after Jazal’s death, during his first planeswalk. That was the day he had met Sarkhan.

  There were more flyers. Trailing behind the huge hellkite were several other, smaller dragons. Their wings were punched through with holes, and their scales were in tatters. One of them had a serious wound to its belly, and another had lost a leg. The flight of dragons had been in a fight, and a brutal one.

  “Karrthus is being ridden,” said a warrior.

  They all looked.

  “It’s Sarkhan,” muttered Kresh, bile dripping from his words.

  Ajani could see Sarkhan himself riding astride the biggest dragon, the hellkite Karrthus.

  “That’s not the dragon I seek,” said Ajani.

  “But that’s the man we seek,” said Kresh.

  The dragons sailed overhead, heading to a glow on the horizon. As he looked, Ajani saw a thin line of distortion in the air above their heads, leading in the same direction as Sarkhan and the dragons. It was a stream of raw mana, coursing through the air to the horizon.

  “What should we do?” asked one of the warriors.

  “Uh, who are they?” asked another.

  A long, strong note blasted on what sounded like a brass instrument.

  “That sounded like an elvish clarion,” said Ajani.

  On the opposite horizon, the tips of elvish banners rose into view. The marching feet of thousands of individuals resonated through the dead landscape of Grixis.

  Ajani ran out from their hiding place to meet up with the army.

  “Cat-man, where are you going?” shouted Kresh.

  “I know these people!” Ajani called back. “Elves, humans, gargantuans, and nacatl,” he said to himself. “These are the armies of Naya!”

  “So where are they headed?”

  They’re headed to the center of all our planes, Ajani thought.

  THE MAELSTROM

  Malfegor’s army marched past the mana maelstrom, but the draconic demon stopped. He regarded the storm of mana,
letting it whip at his body. It was huge; it filled a depression the size of an inverted mountain. All the naked power swirling before him—it was overwhelmingly seductive. He could just reach out, he thought, and consume it for himself—he was going to do what instead, be Bolas’s errand boy? He had trudged for weeks with thousands of corpses just to pass the thing by? Bolas had promised Malfegor the remains of Alara once he had fed from its energy, but promises were worthless. He felt betrayal behind Bolas’s every word. And with the power contained in that maelstrom, Malfegor could just take the plane for himself.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Bolas.

  A dragon-shaped silhouette separated from the black sky over the maelstrom and formed into the elder dragon.

  “A childish prank,” said Malfegor. “It’s beneath you.”

  “A prudent one,” said Bolas. “Tsk. You thought I wouldn’t be monitoring your corrupt and blackened soul?”

  “Watch all you want, master,” said Malfegor, his wings spreading like dark flame. “One word, and this army attacks whatever I say. They could do great violence to an old lizard like you.”

  “You took longer to get to this point than I expected. Is this how you survived since Alara’s beginnings? By waiting for temptation to slap you in the face? I’m surprised. I believed you actually had some promise.”

  Malfegor stepped forward, imposing in his rage.

  “You forget,” said Bolas. “You have plenty to lose here. I may have a rough time with you and your army, but this mana storm is unstable. Without my influence, it might just rupture at any time. I’m a planeswalker, what do I care? If you try to harvest it, and fail miserably as you certainly would, I will just leave. You, however, will have to stay here, and deal with the consequences.”

  Malfegor looked into the maelstrom. Spikes of energy lashed out randomly as it swirled in on itself.

  “I know it’s hard for a demon to understand consequences,” Bolas said with mock pity. “But it’s true. I leave, and the cataclysm destroys Alara and everything in it. Even if you survived, you’d have no world left to call your own. A demon lord with no kingdom to rule—such a shame!”

  Malfegor seethed. “You’ll die someday, planeswalker,” he said. “And somehow, some way, I swear I’ll be there to see it.”

  “Doubtful, on both counts,” said Bolas. “But I appreciate the threatening tone—it does suit you. Now, I think you had an errand to run for me? Activating the last obelisk, so that my project can be complete?”

  Malfegor’s chest burned with swallowed pride. He turned, and directed his wrath on his minions. “Move!” he roared to the army, marching on to Bant. He cracked his lash, striking across the backs of every one of his generals in turn, each blow more savage than the last.

  BANT

  As Rafiq of the Many rode over the hill to the ruins of Giltspire Castle, he saw a glorious thing. The castle was gone, but the brilliant white obelisk remained in its place. And in front of the obelisk, facing him, was a line of siege engines, mounted knights, and a sea of thousands upon thousands of foot soldiers. Above them, aven circled in formation, and in the glare of the sun he could even make out the outlines of a few angels.

  If only he would see the face of that mightiest archangel, Asha herself, he thought. She must be somewhere. It was the battle that was prophesied in the Prayer of Asha. It wasn’t just going to be a simple battle—it was the demon Malfegor, in the flesh, the very same demon Asha died to destroy at the dawn of their recorded tales. Except he hadn’t been destroyed. He had only hidden out in the dead world of Grixis while the five worlds were separated. With their reunion, the demonic abomination was back. If only Asha could return from death to fight demonic forces once more, just as the Prayer foretold. Doubt and belief struggled for domination in Rafiq’s heart; he knew that Asha’s appearance was the key to winning the war, and that if she didn’t show, all of Bant might be lost.

  But one thing was clear: Kaeda must have delivered the message, and all of Asha’s Army had assembled at Giltspire. That was cause for great joy.

  The legions of Bant were assembled just in time too, for Malfegor and his army were only a day behind Rafiq. The undead army hadn’t stopped to rest, so the knight-general and his knights hadn’t been able to either. Rafiq had stopped at a guard station just inside the borders of Bant to find a place to stay for some of the survivors from Grixis, including Levac and his wife Sayah. He had ridden on, switching mounts at every village he came to, riding day and night until he arrived at Giltspire.

  There was one man, an old rhox friend of his, who he wished he could have stopped to see. How had Mubin fared in his absence? If they lived through Malfegor’s tyranny, then Rafiq had exciting news for him. Rafiq hoped the shipment of carmot, the red stone crucial to the creation of etherium, had made it back to Bant.

  “Knight-General!” said a knight riding up to him. Rafiq recognized her, and her crisp salute. “I am Knight-Captain Elspeth.”

  Rafiq managed a smile. “How’s your head, Knight-Captain?”

  “Fine, sir, fine. I’m glad you made it back safely. But you must be exhausted. Please come with me. We have food and healers, and a place for you to rest.”

  “No time for that,” said Rafiq. “Tell me, Elspeth, do you know the word ‘demon’?”

  Color bleached from Elspeth’s face. Rafiq took that as a yes.

  “A demon of legend, Malfegor, leads an army from a place of death. His army is not far behind me. You must take me directly to the command tent.”

  The horns of Malfegor were the first sign they heard of the Grixis army coming over the hill.

  “Get the casters ready,” said Knight-General Rafiq. “What’s the status on the Sighted caste?”

  “The clerics are ready, and the monks,” said Knight-Captain Elspeth. “They await your signal.”

  “Okay. Tell them to get started.”

  “Sir.” Elspeth dashed from the command tent. Rafiq heard her shouting “Clerics!” outside, and the beginnings of the anthem being chanted.

  “You,” Rafiq said to another captain. “The archers. Have them send volleys as soon as the enemy’s in range. And then send in the knights.”

  The captain nodded, saluted, and left the tent.

  There was only one other person left in the tent: a squire.

  “And you,” said Rafiq. “Is my armor repaired?”

  The squire beamed and nodded. “I fitted it with the back plate, just as you requested, Knight-General.”

  “Good,” said Rafiq. “Let’s get it on me. And fetch my sword.”

  Outside the ruins of Giltspire, the arrows rained down on Malfegor’s troops. Some of the undead minions bothered to raise wooden shields to the assault, but most didn’t. The shafts jabbed through flesh as they were meant to, but the undead didn’t mind. In fact, it made them a little spikier, a little tougher to close for melee, for the ground battle to come.

  Malfegor sent in the kathari. They were unreliable bird-creatures, sickly and cowardly, but they blackened the sky with their numbers. Arrows tore through them, thinning them by a tenth in a matter of moments. Again, Malfegor didn’t mind. They fell on the battlefield ahead of his main force, providing carrion for the ground troops to feed upon.

  The rest of the kathari slashed into the bright-feathered aven. The efficient movements of the aven of Bant contrasted with the deranged squawking and snapping of the kathari, but both were effective, and the kathari outnumbered the aven over three to one.

  On the ground, leotau-mounted knights slammed into the zombies and skeletons of the main force. The knights were brutally proficient, and clearly guarded by protection magic; they sliced through Malfegor’s offense unimpeded.

  “Fleshwarpers, hit the knights,” muttered Malfegor to one of his necromancers. “And mop up with the first wave of dreg reavers.”

  Gangs of necromantic taskmages engaged the knights, sending spells at them that temporarily dismantled the protection spells and then deformed the
paladins’ flesh. The knights screamed as they fell from their mounts, their faces twisting around to the back of their heads and the skin of their limbs flaying away from their bodies. The abandoned leotau steeds roared and slashed through many of the zombies on their own, but eventually they were overcome by wave after wave of animated rotting tissue.

  Mutated ogre captains took up huge axes and chopped through chain restraints, setting free a flood of dreg reavers, the enormous undead beasts that served as Malfegor’s heavy infantry. The ground thundered below the armies of Bant as pachydermic behemoths charged toward them.

  The moment that the squire handed Rafiq his helmet, the knight-general was off. The leotau felt none of his spurs, but struck vigorously at the ground with its hooves nevertheless. The battlefield flew past him, surging by like waves in a tide. He saw the bodies of friends and allies. He saw atrocities that would make the Blessed caste weep. But most of all he saw the realization of prophecy. The Prayer of Asha had been true all along. Mubin’s suspicions to the contrary were wrongheaded—it hadn’t been manipulated for the sake of sparking a war; it was divine instruction for victory in the time of war. And soon, per the prayer, the archangel Asha herself would appear, push Bant’s enemies back, and her blessing would end the war for good.

  Overhead, the minor angels slashed into the vulture-like kathari. Embodiments of righteousness and glory, they swung their swords in movements that expressed grace as much as the warrior spirit. The sky drained of blackness as the few angels tore through Grixis’s flyers, and the sun shone through onto the battlefield again.

  Rafiq circled around a confused tangle of Bant knights, and rallied them into formation once more. Together they lunged forward into the path of an onrushing dreg reaver. The reaver accelerated into them, threatening to crush them with its low-slung tusks or impale them with the razor-tipped spears that its riders had lashed to its flanks. At Rafiq’s signal the knights split into two groups, letting the reaver charge between them, and they slashed into its sides with their swords. They tore long gashes in the beast, carving masses of rotten flesh from it, but the razor spears also slashed into them and their mounts.