by John Delaney
Radha concentrated, raising a swarm of fiery, green leaves around her head and shoulders. The verdant force sought out her wounds, eager to fill and repair them, but she held it in check without shaping a spell. As feints go, this would be a risky one.
Slowly, Radha took her hand away from her stomach. Blood still dripped freely from the wound, but she lowered her head and stared at it. Under her fierce gaze and the slightest wisp of Yavimayan mana, the bleeding stopped and the flesh began to knit itself together.
Dinne was too disciplined to let such an opportunity pass. He lunged forward. Radha kept her head down until he was almost on top of her, looking up just in time to catch a throwing spike in the chest.
The force of the metal dart knocked Radha off her feet and laid her flat out on her back. It hurt, but she had been able to twist so that the weapon lodged in her breastbone rather than her heart. Leaves of green flame swirled and eddied over her as she struggled to breathe and clawed at the ground with one hand and her latest wound with the other. A long shadow fell across her upper body, and her flames became brighter in the gloom.
Dinne stood just out of reach, staring silently. His spike vanished from her body, and Radha jammed her clenched fist against the open wound. She coughed blood and groaned, then forced herself up into a sitting position.
“Come on,” she rasped. She beckoned with her free hand. “Come on!”
Dinne was too shrewd to be drawn. He took a step back, drew a spike, and rolled it across his fingers and palm.
Radha’s breath hitched, and she pressed both fists into her chest. She rocked herself forward, trying to roll onto her knees, but she didn’t have the leverage or the breath.
Dinne nodded to her. He raised his spike and drew it back to throw.
“Got you,” Radha said. She threw both arms out toward the cutthroat, and the cloud of green flames surged along her arms and across the space between them. Dinne’s head and upper body became surrounded by a cloud of emerald fire.
Healing magic was probably the last thing Dinne expected his enemies to use. It didn’t hurt him, not at all, but it did stop him where he stood. Nature’s force surged through him, rooting him in place as it searched for damage to fix, for a body to restore and strength to renew.
Radha hurled herself forward, drawing the broken broadsword as she somersaulted toward her foe. The forest spell had made him real, anchored him to the physical world as it swept through his body. If he realized what she had done he didn’t react fast enough. He simply stood in the center of the fiery cloud in a bizarre, almost rapturous, posture as he watched Radha’s lunge through white, featureless eyes.
Radha rolled to her feet and thrust upward with the blade. The ragged, broken end plowed into Dinne’s throat and stuck fast. If the tip had been whole and come to a point she would have struck his head clean off his shoulders. Instead, the thick wedge of metal lodged in his neck, and he stood dumbfounded as Radha rose before him, her hands still on the sword’s hilt.
Dinne let out a wet, ragged cough, the first sound Radha heard him make. She opened her hands and released the sword, leaving it embedded in his neck. Dinne’s hands quickly replaced hers, but his legs were already starting to buckle, and he didn’t have the strength to pull it free.
* * *
—
Dinne staggered as he vainly fumbled for the sword’s handle. The hard, ragged feeling in his throat was so exquisite that he almost lost track of everything else. He wanted to savor it, to wallow in the pure sensation and revel in the undeniable fact of its existence.
He had been poised to deliver the killing blow when the world seemed to recognize him and call him to it. He suddenly smelled the sea and felt the sting of a salt breeze. Sand crunched beneath his boots, and the wind shifted, allowing him a glorious waft of freshly spilled blood. His muscles felt strong, limber, and the fog that had descended over his mind was entirely gone for the first time in decades.
In that initial rush of sensation Dinne thought Leshrac had delivered on his promise. Dinne could feel again. His half-remembered freedom was at hand. Then the Keldon’s green fire completely enveloped him, and he no longer cared who had provided the reward, only that it was his, that he was once more fully alive, fully aware.
He hadn’t even tried to avoid the Keldon’s thrust. He watched Radha roll toward him as if it had nothing to do with him, as if it were a curious thing that was happening to someone else. Then the blade struck home, and Dinne felt the full dolorous weight of live and active sensation.
Watery, black blood trickled down the blade, making the handle slippery and harder to grasp. Dinne tightened his grip and pulled, but his fingers never fully closed around the weapon. He noticed Radha watching him, crowing at him in frenzied triumph.
“That’s for Skive,” she said.
Dinne gurgled and locked eyes on the Keldon. She was a worthy opponent, a warrior worth testing in battle. He stopped clutching at the blade in his throat and extended his hands toward her. He was defeated, dying, but he still clutched at his enemy, yearning to bring her to him.
More than anything he had ever wanted, Dinne longed to latch on to Radha’s windpipe and crush the life from her while he could still feel.
* * *
—
Radha waited for Dinne’s body to realize it was dying. He soon fell to his knees, and she strode forward. She hooked her fingers under the edge of Dinne’s helmet and cast the gray metal aside with a disdainful flick. Dinne’s sunken, mummified features twisted as he stretched his skeletal fingers toward her, but his hands were clumsy, and he could not keep his arms extended without swooning.
Still bleeding from the chest, Radha drew a tear-shaped blade. She paused to ignite the weapon with the fires of Keld, then spun and drove the sharp tip of the blade deep between Dinne’s eyes.
“And this is for the boy.”
The cutthroat staggered back and fell flat on his back with her blades embedded in his throat and face. Radha stared as his wounds pumped a wash of thin, dark blood across the ground. Then Radha stumbled, found her footing, and stood to her full height. A new cloud of fiery, green leaves ignited around her, this time flowing down the length of her body and gathering in her wounds.
Recovering but not yet fully restored, Radha stepped closer to Dinne so her shadow fell across his face. He was blind, helpless, and choking on his own blood, but he was not dead yet. Radha nudged him with her foot, and his hand dropped down to the spikes in his belt.
“This is for me.” Radha spat into his ruined, desiccated face. She thought of the mountain, of the yawning chasm she had scoured deep into the bedrock of Keld. She gathered a store of seething red mana, holding it within, giving it form and purpose. With a snarl, Radha burned Dinne under a torrent of fire that reduced his bones to ash and his armor to slag.
Staggering slightly, Radha turned to the others in the distance. “All clear,” she said. Then she dropped to her knees and cradled her chest and stomach while the healing green fires of Yavimaya finished their work.
Leshrac felt Dinne’s demise but had no time to mourn. There were far more important matters to address.
He was eager to punish Bolas, to hammer the dragon with his fists and cripple him with a single blow. He restrained himself, knowing how many duels he had won against opponents who relied on physical means.
Instead, he sent a caustic wave of black magic toward his foe. He wondered what Bolas would do in the face of a spell that he himself might cast. He was sorely disappointed when Bolas simply teleported out of the way.
Bolas appeared behind Leshrac and exhaled a wide stream of bright red flames. Leshrac laughed and waved the blast aside so that it curved and splattered the cliffs with clinging, liquid fire.
The dragon’s wings spread wide, and Bolas used them to whip up a driving wind. A cloud of sand and pebbles surged toward Leshrac, and as Bolas’s eyes sparkled, each individual piece of windblown grit transformed into a drop of rich, cobalt blue liquid. No
w Leshrac teleported out of danger but not without taking several of the drops across his left arm and shoulder. As he reappeared over the ocean, the drops flattened and expanded, spreading a bitter rush of cold across his left side and forming a thick crust of ice that immobilized his arm.
Leshrac took hold of his stricken arm and wrenched it off at the shoulder. The brittle limb cracked as it pulled free, and Leshrac showed it to the dragon, waggling it like a schoolmarm’s finger. Then Leshrac hurled his arm at Bolas.
Greasy smoke huffed from Bolas’s nostrils, and he spat a thin stream of hot, black soot at the arm that stopped its flight and immolated it in midair. The dragon was too canny to allow himself to be touched by Leshrac, even in this indirect manner.
A new arm sprouted from Leshrac’s shoulder, and he used it to produce a thin, slow, mocking round of applause.
“You’re quite adept at running and hiding,” he said. “Who’d have guessed?”
Bolas growled. Leshrac could see him holding back, ever mindful that Leshrac’s slightest touch could harm him. What would the dragon do next? How would he rise to Leshrac’s challenge?
Bolas spread his wings again and soared higher into the air. He stretched his arms and legs and tail out from his body as lightning sizzled along his diamond-shaped scales. Each of the barrel-sized scales had razor-sharp edges, and Bolas flexed his long, ropy muscles so that all of the scales on his arms and legs stood on end. Leshrac saw the dragon’s mouth moving as the upright scales detached from his body and circled him like hornets around a hive.
Still crawling with sparks, the loose scales oriented their sharp tips on Leshrac and streaked toward him. There were too many in too wide an array to simply dodge, so Leshrac conjured a swirling vortex between himself and the deadly missiles. Those scales that would have struck him were swept up in the whirlwind. The rest simply passed by.
Leshrac dropped his vortex shield and was caught off guard by Bolas’s headlong rush toward him. The dragon’s mouth was open wide as he dived for Leshrac’s head. The Walker of the Night was tempted to let the dragon decapitate him this way, just to see if his new tactile abilities worked from the inside, but he quickly dismissed this as a passing fancy. He concentrated as Bolas soared at him, crafting a pure-mana creature from his memories.
It was an ugly, bat-shaped thing that hadn’t been seen on Dominaria since the great Ice Age, but it was large enough to fill the whole of Bolas’s hungry jaws. The dragon chomped down on the minion and pressed on, trying to crush Leshrac against the cliffs with his closed mouth. Leshrac lunged forward with his hands extended, grasping for the dragon’s head, and Bolas was forced to veer off.
The dragon regrouped and floated for a few moments, merely watching Leshrac as his tail sliced through the salty spray. “Thirsty work, isn’t it? Possessing power and wielding it are as far apart as night and day. Don’t worry, though. You’ll soon get used to it. If I allow you to.”
Bolas coughed and spat a blue-white ball of vapor, a casting that Leshrac recognized even as he took flight. It was an unmaking spell, not enough to kill a planeswalker but more than sufficient to disrupt his thinking and scatter his body like dust in a summer gale. The spell followed when he moved, but it was nowhere near fast enough to catch him.
Two massive waves surged up on each side of Leshrac and slammed together with him in between. The seawater fused into a lopsided pyramid of solid, murky glass that was harder than steel. Leshrac stared out from his translucent prison, momentarily trapped as the dragon came for him. He gathered his strength and shattered the pyramid into building-sized shards of crystal that stopped the dragon’s advance and floated when they hit the water.
“You’ll have to do much better than that,” Leshrac said.
Circling like a bird of prey, Bolas huffed out another disdainful cloud of smoke. He swooped down low over the ocean, and once again the waves rose up, this time engulfing their caster instead of his enemy. The water hardened and crystallized as it had before.
Bemused, Leshrac watched carefully as Bolas stared at him through the hazy, crazed crystal. The dragon didn’t seem confused, yet he had foolishly trapped himself in his own magic. Perhaps it was a ruse. If Leshrac could shatter the crystalline substance, Bolas should have no trouble.
Nicol Bolas did not break free. Rather, he rippled within the rock-hard shape and appeared beside it, still slick and shining from the water. He rolled and banked as he flew toward Leshrac, and this time he did not veer off when the sallow-skinned planeswalker welcomed him with outstretched hands.
Bolas roared by Leshrac, and the Walker of the Night curled under him, his body bending like a serpent’s. Leshrac planted both palms flat against the dragon’s slick belly. As he touched Bolas’s hide Leshrac thought, At last.
Bolas stopped rigid where he was. Leshrac pressed harder. The dragon shuddered and folded his wings but remained suspended in midair. Leshrac curled his fingers and drove all ten digits into the surface of Bolas’s glistening wet scales.
The dragon’s face lunged down on his long neck until he was eye to eye with Leshrac. “Physical assets,” he said, “are only effective if you make physical contact.” He spun away from Leshrac and cracked his tail across the planeswalker’s face like a whip, splitting Leshrac’s skull and driving him hard into the pebbled beach below.
Dazed, Leshrac teleported away as the dragon pounced to finish the job. Madara’s western coast trembled, and great sharp slabs of rock separated from the cliffs. Leshrac fled the avalanche, reappearing near the Talon Gates. He easily repaired the damage to his body, but he was momentarily baffled. Had his new powers failed him already?
Bolas surged free of the falling rocks and spiraled up into the air. His body still glistened from the sea.
Leshrac smiled. Of course. Bolas had encased himself in the same crystalline substance he had used against Leshrac. Neither Phage’s corruption nor Bolas’s mind-ripping embrace had actually reached the dragon’s body.
“Marvelous,” he called. “A brilliant stratagem.”
Bolas nodded graciously. “One that has been used against me in the past. Its effectiveness decreases as soon as it’s discovered, however.”
“Yet you’ve maintained it.”
“For now. Your physical fighting skills are a joke, Leshrac, and I find I like hitting you. I plan to make a habit of it.”
“If I allow it. And that ship has sailed, O Bolas.” The dragon’s insult had stung, however, because it was so patently true. Bolas was a far more capable and ferocious fighter. Leshrac decided to play to his strengths, to the spells and eldritch assaults that had served him so well in the past. He would be sure to have Bolas at a disadvantage before he tried to touch the dragon again.
Leshrac created a whole squadron of batlike minions to attack from above and more of the stonelike dark matter that still held Jeska to bedevil Bolas from below. The dragon burned the minions out of the sky with his flaming breath, but he was unable to prevent the dusky tendrils from latching on to his tail and legs. Bolas tore several out of the ground and sundered several more with a vicious claw swipe, but there were enough of the tentacles to hamper him and make him an easier target.
Leshrac moved in, creating a thick swarm of stinging insects and sending them at the dragon. Each of the venomous bugs was as large as a horse, and their stingers could punch through plate steel. Bolas ignored them and stared unwavering at Leshrac. The insects reached him and settled over him, but as they stung him they each promptly fell dead.
Leshrac nodded to himself. This was another aspect of blue magic, the ability to reflect attacks back on their originator. It was not a reliable strategy against a full-fledged ’walker, but it was more than adequate for the summonings Leshrac sent.
The Walker of the Night began to grow impatient. He had to find a way around Bolas’s defenses quickly or he would be forced to abandon this duel, perhaps even to surrender the prize he was so close to claiming.
Bolas’s greatest strength wa
s his pride, but it was also his greatest weakness. He took attacks on his dignity and his property as seriously as ones upon his person. Leshrac could use that sentimental romanticism to his advantage.
He backed away from the dragon as he collected a massive store of black mana. From this safe distance, he funneled the mystic energy into the sand and rocks of Madara’s shore. Dry beach transformed into bubbling, steaming swampland as Leshrac’s corrosive spell spread sulfurous rot and necrotic decay across the dragon’s beloved home.
Still dealing with the last of Leshrac’s grasping hands, Bolas noted the change to the landscape. He paused, allowing the clutching fingers to find new purchase on his feet and tail, and he hissed loudly. “Is that supposed to upset me? Madara is already famous for her swamps. This one of yours doesn’t even bear comparison.”
“It was worth a try.” Leshrac reached out with his mind, taking hold of the Talon Gates behind him. When Bolas turned his attention back to the grasping hands, Leshrac ripped both spires from their moorings and sent them hurtling toward his foe, one straight on like a spear and the other whirling end over end.
Bolas’s eyes widened, and he roared in outraged fury. His body shimmered from the top of his round skull to the barbed tip of his tail. Frigid air cascaded down to the hands still clutching at him, and they instantly froze, shattered, and fell apart. Bolas stretched his body wide and snared the spinning Talon Gate spire with his hand as his tail curled around the other, catching each before they shattered against the cliffs. He gathered both spires in one hand as he turned to vent his fury on Leshrac.
Leshrac teleported. He appeared directly below the dragon and raised his right hand. His fingers and forearm twisted like a wet rag being wrung out until his arm ended in a needle-sharp point, which Leshrac promptly drove through the dragon’s thick scales, up into the meat and muscle.
