Journey Into Nyx

by Jenna Helland

  The leonins were undaunted by the number of Nyxborn enemies amassed against them. The warriors attacked the wolves with bronze sarissas and flashing swords. Elspeth struck the nearest Nyxborn wolf. She sliced open its flank, but the wound didn’t faze it. Hungrily, it circled around her, but before it could attack again, the hunting horn blew once more. There was a final flash of blinding light, and Elspeth closed her eyes against the mystical glare. When she looked up again, all that was left of the Nyxborn was dissipating smoke and shadows.

  Elspeth lowered her weapon and bowed in gratitude to the leonin who had saved her life. These were the first leonin that she’d encountered on this plane. Like the leonins of Alara, they moved with grace, and she sensed a similar instinctual intelligence and empathetic nature. The battle was over, but the leonin warriors kept their distance. She stood silently and waited for them to make their judgment. Finally, a warrior with a golden mane and a crimson band of cloth across his chest approached her curiously.

  “You’re Elspeth?” the warrior asked.

  Shocked that he knew her name, Elspeth could only nod.

  “She’s here,” the warrior called out. “You were right!”

  He whistled and more leonins appeared on the crest of the hill beyond the edge of the ruins. They hurried down the slope toward Elspeth. With the sun at their back, she couldn’t see their faces until they reached her. The tallest one pushed back his hood. When she saw who it was, she wanted to cry with relief. Her old friend, Ajani, stood before her.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Ajani told her.

  The leonin planeswalker had found her before, and he had never given up on her. No matter what she’d done, he wouldn’t turn his back on her. She stumbled forward into his waiting arms.

  After Xenagos ascended to Nyx, a ring of darkness appeared in the heavens. It occupied the edges of the sky first, like a black crown around the head of the world. But as the hours passed it expanded and traveled inward. It became a wheel of darkness that transformed the horizon into a threatening vision, even in the daytime. None of the gods could stop Xenagos’s creeping void, and many in the pantheon blamed the mortals for the satyr’s intrusion. There were rumors of a Nyxborn army amassing in the west and of shocking god-led violence in the cities. While Keranos expressed his displeasure by sending banks of roiling storm clouds to lash a world at war, Purphoros directed his rage at the sky.

  Elspeth and Ajani traveled with the warriors to the leonin homeland, which they reached after a hard day’s travel. Known as Oreskos, the remote region was beyond Akros, but it was still on the edges of the vast Nessian Forest. Ruins dotted the rocky scrubland, and the party trekked along a timeworn road built by a civilization that no one remembered. Tethmos, the main leonin fortification, was in sight in the windswept valley below when they heard a rumbling in the distance. A pillar of fire blasted up from Mt. Velus, and the horizon shimmered with an ominous red haze. The firestorm intensified and the blasts of molten rock skimmed the bottom of the roiling clouds, then tumbled down into the Nessian Forest. Smoke rose from the trees in the distance, and flocks of birds fled to the stormy sky.

  “Purphoros is a fool,” growled Seza, a leonin warrior with mottled gray fur who was in awe of Ajani. Wherever he walked, she was like his shadow. “He might be aiming for Nyx, but where does he think his fireballs are going to land?”

  “Purphoros doesn’t care who he hurts,” said Pyxathor, a leonin with a golden mane who seemed to hold some authority among the warriors. “None of them do. Gods of arrogance and fools.”

  “Nylea is going to be furious with Purphoros for burning her forest,” Seza said. “That means more trouble for the innocents standing in her way.”

  “Innocents?” Pyxathor asked. “Now you’re calling the humans innocent?”

  “They say Nylea is mad with grief,” Seza continued. “She loved a mortal, and he was murdered. She won’t rest until she has her vengeance and the pantheon is restored to its natural state.”

  Elspeth didn’t know who was saying such things, but she did know they were talking about Daxos. Weary from the journey and shaken at the mention of her friend, the world tilted sideways. Ajani, who was right beside her, reached out to steady her. He gave her a searching glance, but she said nothing on their final descent to Tethmos. The stone walls of the fort were covered with plaster and painted in gold and sky blue, a startling contrast to the bleakness of the day. Seza had explained that during times of peace, Tethmos had a small population. Most leonins were nomadic and visited the fortification only on special days. When the gods turned on the mortals, outlying leonin groups had flocked to the relative safety inside the walls.

  When they reached the humble wooden gates, Elspeth saw that tents and caravans lined the courtyard inside the inner bastion. There were so many packed inside the walls that it looked like the Endless Bazaar Elspeth had seen on the plane of Kodisha.

  “Brimaz has encouraged his people to shelter here,” Seza said. “Some want to join the ranks of the humans. But others refuse.”

  “Who is Brimaz?” Elspeth asked.

  “Our king,” Seza said as the wooden gates of Tethmos closed behind them. “And I would address him as such. Only Ajani has first-name privileges.”

  Ajani laughed. “Brimaz gets annoyed at such formality. He would rather you call him a brother than a king. Is there someplace we could impose on your hospitality, Seza? My friend needs rest.”

  Within minutes, Elspeth was inside a cozy tent tucked near the outer wall. Inside, everything seemed to be made of pillows. Outside, the wind picked up, and an unseasonal torrent of rain drenched the land. She knew Ajani was brimming with questions for her, but thankfully he left her in peace. Elspeth crawled under layers of blankets and slept for hours.

  The war council sat in a circle around an open fire pit in the king’s hall in the central bastion. They listened intently to Elspeth’s account of the devastating events she’d witnessed at the victory celebration. But she chose her words carefully and didn’t tell the assembly of leonins everything that had happened. She never mentioned Daxos or the circumstances of his death. There was no way to justify her crime. The right words didn’t exist, even if she wanted to try. An “Obliterator” meant nothing to a leonin of Theros.

  “So Xenagos learned of you from Phenax,” the king said sadly. “May I see the weapon?”

  Elspeth handed him her spear-blade. The king inspected it carefully before handing it back.

  “A burden or a Godsend?” Brimaz asked. “I guess that’s yet to be determined.”

  “Purphoros has ceased his firestorm temporarily,” Seza said. “All of the forest would have burned down if he had not.”

  “Heliod strikes against Meletis, and part of Akros has been destroyed,” said an advisor on the other side of the circle. “Karametra shields Setessa from the gods’ wrath, but how long until Heliod convinces her to join them?”

  “We must join the humans in their fight against the gods!” another leonin argued.

  “Why should we help them, our former oppressors?” Pyxathor demanded.

  Lanathos the Chronicler, an older man with cropped hair, sat near Elspeth. His neck and lower face were scarred with a webbed pattern that Elspeth recognized as mystical fire. Lanathos had been the victim of a powerful mage, and she wondered if the gruesome scars were the reason he lived outside human cities. King Brimaz seemed to hold the chronicler in great regard and often asked for his opinion or his recounting of historical events.

  Lanathos leaned toward her and whispered, “The archon Agnomakhos and his human army cast the leonins out of Meletis. The leonin believe he did it with the blessing of the gods. It’s the subject of much debate.”

  Around them, the leonins argued loudly until Brimaz raised his hands for quiet. He turned to Ajani.

  “You’ve been quiet, old friend,” the king said. “You have both an outsider’s perspective and a friendship with Elspeth, who has inadvertently become the eye o
f this storm. I would welcome your counsel.”

  “I have some sense of how Xenagos manipulated the metaphysics of this world to occupy Nyx,” Ajani said. The leonins around the fire stirred. They wanted to ask for more details on how this powerful transformation took place, but their king was in the midst of a question, and so his advisors kept silent.

  “Is it reversible?” Brimaz asked.

  “Magic by its nature is mutable—it can be changed, dissipated, altered …” Ajani said. “I don’t know how, exactly, to correct this situation, but I’m confident that it can be done.”

  “What did you mean, the metaphysics of this world?” Lanathos interrupted.

  “The gods derived from people’s belief in them,” Ajani said. “If I had to name it, I would call it theogenesis, and it’s a mechanism of the natural world.”

  Only Elspeth could see how he was skirting the issue of their plane versus the myriad planes he’d visited. Each world exhibited a unique presentation of mystical energy, and to Ajani, each world’s magic was like a treasured fingerprint.

  “Are you saying they—they aren’t real?” Lanathos stammered. He was the only one in the room who seemed shocked by what Ajani was implying.

  “Of course they’re real,” Ajani said. “From the moment they sprang into existence, they were real. A flame is a flame whether it came from flint or if it was breathed by a dragon. The moment of conception is less important than the act of creation itself.”

  “But …” Lanathos seemed at a loss for words.

  “Pyxathor, you have the floor,” Brimaz interrupted. He had little patience for metaphysical discussions even in time of peace, and he wasn’t going to entertain such a debate now.

  “Why are the gods blaming the humans?” Pyxathor asked. “Why are they attacking the mortals’ settlements?”

  “Because of Xenagos’s Revel?” Elspeth guessed. “Perhaps they believe the mortals contributed to his ascension.”

  “Perhaps,” King Brimaz said. “I guess we’d have to ask a god to know for sure.”

  “So do we join the humans in their fight or not?” Seza demanded.

  “The gods are bringing their Nyxborn armies through the Nykthos, the nexus point between our realms.” Brimaz said. “Pyxathor will lead any warriors who do not wish to aid the humans. You will go there, intercept the Nyxborn as they arrive, and kill them before they can do more damage.”

  Pyxathor stood and bowed to his king. “I’m honored that you trust me with this task,” he said.

  “For those who wish to aid the humans, I’ll lead an army to the Nessian Forest where the humans are amassing for a strike against the gods’ army,” Brimaz continued. “I welcome all who are willing to join me, but I respect any who choose to follow Pyxathor.”

  “Can you gain access to Nyx through the Nykthos?” Elspeth asked.

  “No, only the Nyxborn can use it as a conduit,” Lanathos answered. “And they can’t go back the way they came. Once they are in the mortal realm, they can never return to Nyx.”

  “Is there no way into Nyx?” Elspeth asked.

  No one spoke for a long moment, but all eyes were fixed on Elspeth. In the past, Elspeth might have squirmed uncomfortably at the attention. Tonight, she raised her chin defiantly. They couldn’t stop her, even if they didn’t want to help her; she would find a way.

  Finally, Brimaz asked, “Why do you want to go to Nyx?”

  “To kill Xenagos,” Elspeth said. She didn’t say the real reason out loud, but it echoed in her mind like cacophonous chimes: to avenge the death of Daxos.

  “You cannot kill a god,” Lanathos said. “No mortal can do it.”

  “You cannot kill a god,” Elspeth replied. “But you don’t have a sword forged by a god.”

  Brimaz raised a hand of caution. “You don’t know what your weapon is capable of. Let’s pursue another path to victory.”

  “You are pursuing two paths already,” Elspeth said. “I choose this one.”

  Lanathos looked troubled. “There’s a tree on the waterfall at the edge of the world. Many myths describe an entrance to Nyx through Kruphix’s temple.”

  “How?” Elspeth said.

  “The god-stories aren’t clear,” Lanathos said. “Some speak of a ladder to Nyx, which must be figurative. And even if you find the way, you can’t get through the gates without passing an ordeal and receiving the blessing of a god.”

  “I assume the gates are figurative as well?” Elspeth asked.

  “No one knows,” Lanathos said. “Maybe the gates are as real as that fire. Or maybe everything is mist and light. I have no guidance on this.”

  “I don’t care,” Elspeth said. “Unless you tell me there’s a way to kill Xenagos from here, then I’m going to Nyx.”

  “I know of no way,” Lanathos said. “I might be able to discover one, but it would take time.”

  “There is no time,” Elspeth said furiously.

  “She’s right,” Ajani said. “The god’s wrath will scour the world if we don’t stop it.”

  “How do I get to the edge of the world?” Elspeth asked. “Do I just take a ship and sail for the horizon?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Lanathos said. “It’s not a linear course. It can be done with a ship, but you need a navigator who knows where he’s going.”

  “Who has this information?” Ajani asked.

  “The god-stories speak of two people who know the way,” Lanathos said. “Theophilia, who is Nylea’s naiad companion, has visited Kruphix often. But she would not help you. She loves Nylea, who is at war with the mortals.”

  “I think I met Theophilia already,” Elspeth said. “She tried to kill me in the forest.”

  “Well, the other—and this is strange,” Lanathos mused. “Callaphe the Mariner knows the way. She is a figure of myth, and had not been seen for ages. But in recent months, there have been many sightings of her. Callaphe knows the edge of the world better than anyone else. She has a ship known as the Monsoon that she can sail along the precipice of the waterfall.”

  “Where can I find this Callaphe?” Elspeth asked.

  “She dwells near the Siren’s Shipyard,” Lanathos said. “The god-stories say you must throw a shell bearing the likeness of the kraken into the water to capture her attention.”

  “You are resolved to this plan, Elspeth?” Brimaz asked. “You mean to make your way to Nyx and confront this satyr, Xenagos?”

  “Yes,” Elspeth said.

  “You can travel with us to the Nessian Forest and then follow the river to the sea,” Brimaz said. “The tyranny of the gods has gone on long enough, and the satyr doesn’t deserve to have dominion over a pile of dirt. If I could find a way to bring him to his knees, I will happily cut his head off myself.”

  “I’m coming with you, Elspeth,” Ajani said.

  “And I am grateful,” Elspeth assured him. “I need the help.”

  She knew this wasn’t something she could do alone.

  King Brimaz led his band of warriors down the Oreskos Road, a dirt track that served as the main route between the leonin’s homeland and the Nessian Forest. The leonins traveled at a high rate of speed, and Elspeth had little time to ponder anything but her rapid pace down the rutted road. Whenever they crested a rise, Elspeth could see Mt. Velus burning indignantly in the distance. Blasts of fire arched upward at irregular intervals. Purphoros was still taking wild shots at Nyx, and the mortals were bearing the burden of his anger.

  By noon of the second day, they reached a wide valley between two separate mountain ranges. The swampy lowland was home to the Sperche River, which choked out life with its frequent flooding and left infertile dirt and gravel in its wake. A jagged ridge of limestone mountains loomed on the other side of the valley. Eventually, the Oreskos Road led to a gap between two of the limestone mountains. This natural formation was known as the Cypress Gates, and it marked the edge of the Nessian Forest. The mountains were heavily forested, although they were not considered part of the
forest proper. Travelers hadn’t entered into Nylea’s domain until they’d passed beyond the Cypress Gates.

  But the valley was ten miles wide, and they had to ford the rushing Sperche River. Keen-eyed warriors had spied a traveling party in the distance at the crossroads at the heart of the valley. By the time the leonins reached the crossroads, the sun was low in the sky. As they approached, they saw that most of the people were already dead, just corpses sprawled along the road.

  There had been some kind of rustic shrine marking the crossroads, but it had been destroyed and the rubble blasted in a cone-shaped pattern. The shredded flesh of the bodies had been partially eaten by some beast, and the ground was covered in paw prints. It didn’t take an oracle to see that the indentations in the ground were infused with the stars of Nyx. The Nyxborn killers were leaving traces of themselves for all to see.

  A single figure knelt in the middle of the road. He wore the tattered robes of a priest of Heliod.

  Brimaz motioned to Ajani and Elspeth to follow him while most of his contingent kept their distance. Elspeth, with a dark hood pulled up to hide her face, trailed behind the two leonins. As they drew closer, Elspeth recognized the man kneeling in the center of the carnage. His name was Stelanos, and he had been one of Daxos’s friends in Heliod’s temple in Meletis. As they approached, he turned his head slightly and they saw that his eyes had been ruined by some mystical cause. He was blind, and where his eyes had been mist leaked out and into the air, like smoke emerging from the cracks in an old forge. Stelanos clutched a ceramic flask with both hands as if it was the only thing that could keep him safe.