However Nissa felt about this plan, she recognized it was prudent for her to switch from being the party’s scout to pulling up the rear. If they were going to be ambushed, as everyone else seemed to think, being in the back meant that if the attack came from the front or center, she’d be in position to respond. Being last in line would prevent the allies from being picked off one by one. She had no fear of being picked off herself. There was nothing on Zendikar that could hurt her.
Instead, Azl lead the way, as he had the most experience navigating Barrel Canyon’s many winding paths.
Now and then Nissa looked up to try and catch a glance of Sorin, but if he was up there at all, she saw neither hide nor hair of him. Had he just flown off to the end of the Canyon? The thought rankled.
The allies walked in silence, each of them tense, waiting for the trap to spring shut. Hiba kept to the back nearest Nissa.
“Mistress?” he said. “What troubles you? Is it the vampire?”
Nissa scowled at him. Troubled her? What troubled her? She had barely managed to explain herself to Sorin; she didn’t even know where to begin with Hiba.
Go home, she thought, and not for the first time. She had even said it to him, more than once. She might have said it again, but now was neither the place nor time.
“It’s too loud here,” she said instead. “Usually I can hear Zendikar breathing, but all I can hear is this damn buzzing.”
“Buzzing?” Hiba asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You don’t hear that?” she asked. “Zzzzzzzz? Sounds like heartstabbers or jagwasps. I can barely hear myself think.”
“No mistress,” Hiba said, looking at her sideways.
Imbecile. “You guys hear any buzzing sound?” Nissa called forward.
“Nope,” Azl shouted back.
The scholarly merfolk, Fizel, cradled his his head in his webbed hands. “If they didn’t know where we were before,” he said.
“Trust me,” said Hoshi, gripping his axe a little tighter. “They know.”
“I can’t believe you don’t hear this,” Nissa said, shaking her head. She pressed her hands over her ears and closed her eyes, but it did nothing to diminish the sound. Oh, Nissa thought.
She crashed into Hiba and knocked him over. She would have fallen on top of him, but her chosen grabbed her by her shoulder and pulled her up. The allies had stopped abruptly.
“What’s the hold up?” Nissa shouted.
“Shut up!” Azl shouted back. The front half of the party was around a bend in the canyon. Nissa pushed past the cat, the goblin brothers, Fizel and Euma, Smara, Hoshi, and Mudro to get to where Azl had stopped.
She could see why, now. There was a corridor ahead with slightly wider walls, the far side of which was concealed from view by a tall boulder. This was what Sorin had meant when he had warned about an ambush. She could tell because there were about a dozen dead goblins strewn about, weapons still in hand, their skin an ashen gray.
“What--” Nissa started to say.
“Vampires. Or maybe just one vampire.”
“Do you think Sorin did this?” Nissa asked.
“I was going to ask you,” Azl said. “Because if it’s not him we’re in for a bad time.”
As if on cue, a wordless scream echoed through the canyon from behind them: Hiba.
Nissa cursed to herself. Probably just what they wanted! The thought so enraged her that almost without realizing it she had torn the canyon apart. Fissures shot through the ancient stone, great thunderous cracks spiralling out from where she stood. Too slow, she thought, and where only moments before the walls had pressed upon the allies, squeezing them into single file, now they opened l like a great pair of jaws, swelling upward on either side as surf ready to crash. Too stupid, she thought, and the bits and boulders tumbled and slid away and up, heedless of gravity or wind or time. There was Hiba with a black-haired, armored vampire at his shoulder, her teeth bared. Too weak! she screamed at herself, and the canyon swarmed, a talus talon sweeping the vampire assailant away, burying her in a swell of stone.
Nissa rose into the air, borne on a crest of cliff’s crumbles. The stone’s curves and twists yielded to her, scattering at the shift of her gaze. Three more vampires recoiled from sudden exposure, their hiding spots laid bare by Nissa’s terraforming.
A great beast of stone coalesced from the former canyon’s rubble, vine its sinew, its tendon root. Stone Jaws snapped about one vampire, crushing him in a splatter of dust and stolen blood; the second met the stone beast’s tail and was flung far into the clear sky. Beneath shale claws it pinned the last vampire, the earth and stone heaving, impatient but obedient as a hunter’s hound.
Kill! Zendikar screamed above the din in Nissa’s head, Extinguish! but Nissa held the voice at bay.
“Damn,” Azl said, and there was nothing for anybody else to add. The Allies, startled but safe, jaws slack and eyes bulging, took stock of their number. Nothing scratched but Hiba’s confidence; Mudro helped him to his feet.
The swell of earth which had risen beneath Nissa spread beneath her, lowering her toward the captive creature. The canyon was no more, now only a crater. At its edges her party cowered, thoughts of ambush fleeing from the image of their prickly guide transformed. The stone and earth at the canyon’s center had receded, revealing not a boulder, as Nissa had first thought, but a hedron.
The vampire writhed, fangs gnashing, his fat tongue lolling. Over his face hung a strange helmet wrought of a material not quite bone, strapped to the vampire’s face with a tangle of thick purple ropes. As Nissa bent to examine it, her Chosen grasped the edge of the helm and wrenched it free.
The vampire’s face was slick with a slimy film, maybe mucus, and his eyes were nothing but bloody pits. Removing the helm, however, wrought a change in his demeanor, and he seemed to regain some of his faculties. A stream of hisses and clicks issued from his mouth, the language of his kind.
Nissa prodded him with her staff. “Your friends are dead, creature,” she said. “There are none who speak your foul tongue.”
“I speak it,” Fizel said, raising his hand, but at the glare Nissa gave him, the Merfolk’s enthusiasm withered to regret. She gave her head a jerk to call him over.
It’szzzsozzzdamnzzzloud, Nissa thought. Canzzzbarelzzzerezzzyselfzzzthinzzz. “What’s... what’s he saying?” she managed, pinching her nose with her fingers and jamming her eyes shut against the buzzing.
“He asks for mercy,” Fizel said. “He asks for death. He says: more will come. More will come.”
Nissa did not answer. She had not heard. She remembered, now. Not heartstabbers. Not jagwasps. She fell to her knees, hands against her ears. The buzzing swelled, reaching dreadful crescendo, drowning out all other sensation, burying the hissing of the vampire, the shouts of the Allies, the cry of the plane and even her own pulse.
The Mountain, she thought, feeling the tendrils of that terrible memory crawl through her mind, feeling it tighten around her skull, its cold grasp coil around her heart.
She screamed, and then she was gone.
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
In the morning they broke camp and continued onward along the twisting canopy path, wishing Noyan and his party safe travels. Nissa was determined not to speak to Sorin after the previous night’s uncomfortable conversation. She struck out far ahead of the party of allies, stopping every now and again to close her eyes and listen. Beneath the calls of birds, the stomping footsteps of beasts, even the rustle of leaves in the wind, she sought the heartbeat sound of the plane itself.
In some places, the pulse was erratic and violent, a phenomenon the Zendikari referred to as the roil. In the hollows and eddies where wild mana surged, people died. Trees bucked climbers, paths crumbled, stones tumbled down on unsuspecting passers-by, gusts sent walkers flying and sent kitesailers crashing to the ground. Most other Zendikari Nissa had met thought of the roil as capricious and random. They employed the services of lullmages to calm the squalls, used ropes and hooks to keep themselves from being carried off, kept all manner of trinkets and superstitious customs meant to ward off danger, stayed close to paths where hedrons hung nearby.
They were, all of them, idiots.
All Nissa had to do to keep from falling prey to the wild mana of Zendikar was listen. For the longest time she had wondered why nobody else bothered to pay attention to their surroundings, until she realized that nobody else was able to. She had something nobody else had: the guarantee of safety in a deadly world. For a while, her ability had been a wondrous boon. It kept her tribe safe, let her lead expeditions into dangerous territory, helped treasure hunters and scholars find precious pieces of the past hidden in buried ruins. It had all been so amazing... until she had found the Mountain.
Nissa shuddered. Couldn’t let herself be distracted by old fears. She took a deep breath. Tell me, she thought.
Calm, the answer came. Safe.
She pulled out a length of red rope and tied it to an i-hook, a signal to Hiba that this was the path to follow.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to let me tie a rope around my waist and just let you pull me along,” Sorin said, floating along beside Mudro, covering his eyes against the brightness of the day. The survivalist laughed heartily at the suggestion.
“What happens if we walk into a bloodbriar patch?” Azl said, speaking up from behind. “It would take us all day to pull you out of that.”
“Hey, if he wants to pay us for a whole extra day,” Mudro said, shrugging.
“I take your point,” Sorin said.
“I’ll pull ya along,” said the eldest goblin. “Wees don’t mind the extra pay. Ain’t that right, boys?”
“Aye aye,” came the response.
Sorin laughed and shook his head. “I think I’ll pass. I appreciate your mercantile spirit, though. You’re enterprising fellows, aren’t you?”
“Like me mudda always said, ‘ain’t no job too dirty a goblin won’t do it for a hot meal and hammock.”
“May she rest in peace,” said one of the other goblins.
“My condolences,” Sorin said, more to be polite than out of any particular investment in the affairs of the goblins.
“S’aright,” the eldest goblin said. “She died doin what she loved: checking for scorpions in shoes in exchange for a hot meal and a hammock.“
The other brothers laughed at that, and Sorin found himself wondering whether they were pulling his leg.
“Does that mean I could be paying you in hammocks?” Sorin asked, stroking his chin. “I mean, hypothetically speaking.”
“Hy-po-thetically, that’s just a met-a-phor,” the eldest goblin said with a wide grin.
“You know I don’t believe I ever got you boys’s names,” Sorin said. When he told this story, he wanted to get the details right.
“What, me brudda, me brudda and me?” said the eldest, pointing at each of them in turn. “That one’s me brudda. That one’s also me brudda. And I’m me.”
Again, a salvo of mad cackling ensued from the siblings.
“How am I meant to tell you apart?” said Sorin.
“I’s shorter than they is,” said the shortest goblin.
“I’s got the biggest ears,” said the other.
“And I’s in charge,” said the eldest.
“Alright,” said Sorin. “You’re Shorty, you’re Ears, and you’re Chief. Does that work?”
“Whatever,” said Chief.
They reached the edge of the forest at midday. Nissa was waiting for them on the last branch, chin resting atop folded hands resting on the tip of her staff. The branch arced out toward a sheer cliff face, and terminated a short distance from a ravine formed from a split in the stone.
The allies became more visibly agitated the closer they came to the cliff face. Even the stone cat shrank a little, shoulders hunched, gait slinking.
“Uh-uh,” Sorin said when they got within earshot of Nissa. “I’m not going in there.”
“It’s the quickest way to get to the port,” Nissa said, gritting her teeth. “I promise you, you won’t get smashed by the rocks. Zendikar is quiet here.”
“I’m not worried about the rocks,” said Sorin.
Nissa rolled her eyes.
“What?” Sorin said. “These guys know.” He gestured at the allies, who were busy double checking where their knives were buckled and adjusting their scabbards to more easily draw their swords.
“This place sucks,” Hoshi said, by way of agreement, and a murmur of agreement passed through their assembled ranks.
“Many dead here,” said Smara.
“What?” Nissa asked. “What’s the problem?”
The studious merfolk narrowed his eyes at her. “You ever come this way before? You know what they call this place?”
“Barrel canyon,” Nissa said. “I don’t see why that’s so spooky to you.”
“As in ‘spearing fish in a barrel,’“ said Euma, the merfolk aerialist.
Chief opened his mouth to make a joke but Mudro slapped him on the back of his head.
“If I was in the business of designing the perfect place to ambush an expedition,” said Sorin, pointing to the cliff, “It would look exactly like this. We go in there we’re asking to be murdered. I’d prefer not to be murdered.”
“You and I can protect them,” Nissa said.
Sorin sighed. That she was right made the notion all the more frustrating.
“Fine,” he said. “You guys go into spear-fishing murder canyon and I’ll float along above and we’ll meet at the other end. Okay?”
“What for?” Nissa asked.
“Classic goblin tactics,” said Shorty. “Always ambush the ambushers. Watch out for their ambushers who is going to ambush your ambushers who is ambushing their ambushers who is ambushing you.“
“As someone who has experienced more than one goblin ambush,” Azl said, “I can attest to the wisdom of this plan.”
“Goblins is clever,” said Ears.
“Right proper clever,” said Chief.
“I’m all for it,” said Mudro. “Makes more sense than the plan my party had last time I was here,” the other allies agreed.
“Okay? Okay,” Sorin said, and took off into the air.
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
When nobody rose to her bait, Nissa stepped away from the fire again and wandered off onto an adjoining branch. What am I doing here? She asked herself, and not for the first time. Here, as in on this expedition with a lunatic vampire; here, as in this whole godforsaken plane; here, as in by herself sitting on the edge of a branch, two hundred feet in the air, legs dangling, alone.
For just a moment she though of leaving. Of going out into that nothingness she knew encircled her home, and landing at random on one of the endless multitude of planes. But that other world would be no better than this one, she knew. Actually, it stood a fair chance of being markedly worse. They might not have elves. They might not even have trees. At least here she knew the danger. At least here she had Hiba, useless as he was. At least here--
“This guy bothering you?” her chosen asked, stepping out of thin air above and behind her. Nissa turned just in time to watch Sorin shove him off the edge of the branch. The vampire planeswalker craned his head to watch him as he fell, straining his ears to catch the inevitable thud.
“You know,” Sorin said, settling down beside Nissa. “I think if I had one of those it would solve a lot of my problems.”
“Go away,” Nissa said, looking up the arm of the branch.
“Do you do that on purpose or is it a defense mechanism?” Sorin asked, unfazed. Nissa wheeled on him, bringing to bear the full extent of the day’s frustrations.
“MAYBE I JUST DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU!” she screamed. “Maybe I like being out here by myself! Maybe I’d rather be anywhere but next to you! Did you think about that? Or were you too busy being wrapped up in your own stupid vampire life with your stupid vampire campfire stories to consider that I might not want anything to do with you!”
“Are they, like, involved?” Noyan Dar asked. None of them had missed a single word of Nissa’s tirade.
“We’ve been with them for three days,” Azl answered.
“Well, he doesn’t waste any time, does he?” Noyan said, grinning.
“She’s got a lot on her mind,” Hiba said, trying to speak up and only succeeding in squeaking.
Mudro shook his head. “Why you always bending over backwards for this girl?”
“I meant the elf guy,” Sorin said, miming his previous push. “Does he show up whenever anybody gets close or am I special?”
“ ‘Gets close?’ You’re such a creep,” Nissa said, shoving Sorin. He bent like wheat in wind, straightening as soon as the gust passed.
“I don’t know if you meant to offend me, but you’ve really only succeeded in paying me a compliment,” he said. “I’m flattered, really. But believe it or not, I didn’t come here to indulge your vampire obsession or fulfill your schoolhouse crush.”
Nissa’s face flushed about as much as an elf is capable of flushing, which is to say, not very much. She coiled in anticipation of another livid outburst, but Sorin stopped her with a wave of his finger. She felt the anger drain out of her, felt the tension leave her muscles. Instead of screaming, as she had very much intended to do, she let out a long, deflated sigh.
“There,” Sorin said. “Isn’t that better?”
“What...“ Nissa started to say, and found herself unable to finish.
“I just want to have a conversation with you. Is that too much to ask?”
“Why?” Nissa managed to say. She felt vigor returning slowly to her limbs, her lungs, her face, but it was a slow drip rather than a cascade.
Sorin shrugged and looked out into the dark canopy. “Being a planeswalker sucks, if you’ll pardon the expression. I mean, it’s great. You get to go to lots of new interesting places, get to meet a lot of interesting people. But every now and again you meet another planeswalker, and it’s never ‘hey, how’s it going, what’s your name,’ it’s always ‘get the hell away from me or I’ll murder you.’ Us meeting, you and me? That’s a rare thing. Us not killing each other? That’s even rarer. I just want to talk to you.”
Nissa shook her head. She couldn’t let herself be suckered into talking to him. If she avoided him, if she refused to speak with him, maybe he’d leave, and maybe what he’d said about the hedrons and the plane-devouring monsters wouldn’t be true, and maybe if it wasn’t true she could forget about the mountain, what she’d seen inside the mountain when...
“Where was your first walk?” Sorin asked. “Mine was Serra’s Realm. Angels everywhere. Amazing place, really, except that they wanted to kill me. But like I said, that’s pretty common.”
Nissa gave him the strongest look of disgust she could assemble. But he didn’t move. Just sat there, expectantly. She hadn’t known him long enough to realize that patience was chief among his scant virtues. But she had realized what he’d been trying to tell her. He was lonely. The big, scary, ancient vampire planeswalker was lonely, and he was here, talking to her, because he had nobody else to talk to.
She held up her fist, extending one finger at a time. “One: don’t ever do that thing you just did to me again. Two: when your business here is finished, leave and don’t ever come back. Three: make a move on me and I’ll obliterate you. Okay?”
Sorin shrugged again. “Sure. Whatever.”
“Lorwyn,” Nissa said.
“What?”
“Lor-wyn. The plane. That was my first walk.”
Sorin nodded, stroking his chin. “Elves,” he said.
“Elves,” she replied. “At first it was... it was wonderful. Nothing like the way things are here. Everyone was so nice and so beautiful and they treated me like I was their sister. They told me how pretty I was, and how gifted, and how strong. They... they even made me a pair of horns, so I would feel at home.”
“But...” Sorin said.
“But then it got weird. It was dirty looks and whispers at first. Then little things started happening, like bugs in my food, thorns in my bed, spiders in my hair.”
“Agreed. And my friend, Dwynen, told me it was the work of these little goblin things called boggarts. And I believed her, because everyone had been so kind to me. Dwynen took me out on a hunt with the rest of the pack--tribe, the rest of the tribe. I thought we’d be hunting deer or aurochs or something. I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t part of the tribe, so I went along. But they weren’t hunting for meat. They weren’t killing for food. They were killing for sport. Boggarts, and kithkin, and flamekin. Anyone who wasn’t an elf. Cut them down, cut them up, left them maimed and disfigured. So I ran. Planeswalked away. Went to this place where everything was just one giant city--”
“Ravnica,” Sorin said.
“--and it was awful, so I planeswalked somewhere else, this place where everything was metal--”
“Argentum,” Sorin said.
“--and it was so awful so I planeswalked somewhere else. And every place was worse than the last. Every plane was just another bead in an endless strand of hellish garbage. So I thought, ‘I’m going home. I’m going home and I’m going to do my best to make sure Zendikar never ever ever gets as bad as any of these places.’ There. That’s it. That’s the whole story. Okay? Will you leave me alone now?”
“That sounds--” Sorin began to say, and Nissa saw the twitches in his face that precede something conciliatory and totally insincere.
“Just save it,” Nissa said, cutting him off.
Sorin sighed. “I’ll get out of your hair,” he said with a wink, getting to his feet. “Early start tomorrow? Any chance I can convince you to let me and the crew sleep it off?”
“Absolutely not,” Nissa said, stifling a smile.
“Alright. I’ll go back and tell them the bad news.”
A thought struck her, accompanied by a sinking in her gut. “Sorin?”
“Yeah?” he said over his shoulder.
“Is that why you wanted to talk to me?”
“Nah,” said Sorin, stopping and turning around. The firelight behind him gave his silver hair an angelic glow. “I can’t stand talking to these jokers.” He jerked his thumb to indicate the allies. “Not a good listener among them. Hopeless audience for storytelling. I don’t know who raised them, but they’re complete savages.”
Nissa screwed up her mouth. As lies went, it was passable. She gave him the benefit of the doubt. “I’m afraid I haven’t been a very good listener, either.”
“It’s fine,” Sorin said. “Just hope it means you’ll return the favor.”
“Was it true?” Nissa asked. “About Nahiri and Ula?”
Sorin smiled. “More or less.”
“What happened to her?” Nissa asked. That had been the first thing he’d said to her. Where can I find Nahiri the Lithomancer? “Do you think she’s alright?”
Sorin’s expression darkened. “I don’t know. I hope so. But seeing this place... I fear something must have happened to her.”
Nissa nodded, to show him she’d heard, and then looked away, down into the darkness of the forest below. She didn’t watch him turn, didn’t watch him walk back to the campfire. She closed her eyes, and reached out, expanding her awareness into the invisible realm of mana, letting herself feel the twisting and shuddering roil surge all around her. Tell me, she thought. Speak.
A ways away, farther than she could see, a branch bent too far and snapped, exploding into splinters. Below, the earth beneath roots of the forest strained against itself, contorting to the brink of quake. Above the forest, blades of air cut through a flock of passing tern, leaving nothing but gore and feathers behind.
Pain, Nissa thought. Rage.
And behind it something worse. A low thrum, almost imperceptible, emanating from somewhere out of reach. The Mountain, she thought. And there it was, almost too slight to catch, a vacillation in the thrumming, a beat, a pulse. A signal.
Nissa shivered and got up to find her tent.
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
“Can you make me dream?” Zada asked Jace, once they were back at her hideout, a warehouse on a wharf. Most of the sellswords had dispersed to their own corners, but the kor and minotaur joined Jace, Gideon, and Zada around a table made from an upended spool.
“I can suggest images into your unconscious mind,” Jace said. His voice was reedy, thin. Talking was something he wasn’t used to doing. Gideon tried not to think about the other planeswalker, because he knew that Jace would be able to read those thoughts, and as far as Gideon was concerned, their partnership was already somewhat strained. “But I can’t make any promises on the tone or content of the dream.”
Bodyguard, Gideon thought. As if. He put his hands behind his head and tilted his chair back, shut his eyes and tried to think of home.
I don’t recommend letting your guard down, came the voice in his head, intrusive and disconcerting. Gideon had to chuckle at that. There was nothing these mercenaries could do to him. Any unease Jace felt was his own. He just didn’t want his ‘bodyguard’ to be asleep if things got a little rough.
Gideon did not enjoy hurting people. Rather the opposite, actually. But he had a gift, the sort of gift that was so incredible it might as well be a curse, and to ignore that gift would be irresponsible, unconscionable, ridiculous. He wondered how much Jace knew about him. Surely it was close to everything, if he could read minds as well as he seemed to be able to. Did he have a grasp on Gideon’s magic? Did he understand that Gideon had come from a place where fate and the justice of Gods were as tangible as the walls of a maze? Maybe he did. But if Jace had any inkling of Gideon’s disposition, he didn’t seem to care.
“You’re travellers,” Zada observed, uncorking a bottle of red liquor and pouring out thimbles for her lieutenants and guests. Gideon declined. It would be wasted on him. Jace glanced at his shot with hesitation, but after considering it, or after determining telepathically that it wasn’t poison, he threw his back, coughing violently. The minotaur laughed and clapped him on the back.
Jace, rather embarrassed, managed to put himself together enough to respond: “We’re from far away, yes. We’re looking for someone.”
“Zada knows many someones. Perhaps she knows whom you seek,” said the minotaur.
“This is Rajal,” Zada said, gesturing to him. “And this is Kriten,” indicating the kor.
As minotaurs went, this Rajal seemed to be capable of keeping himself in line. Gideon was not a fan of minotaurs, but he had been to enough planes to know that his opinion had been disproportionately skewed by the bloodthirsty maniacs on his home plane. If he had ever seen a kor before today, though, he didn’t remember it.
“You don’t know her,” Jace said, with all the certainty afforded him by clairvoyance. “She’s never been to this city.”
“Unlucky,” said Kriten. “Zulaport is the edge of the world. To have come here only to leave empty-handed must be... disappointing.”
“It was a gamble,” Jace admitted. “But there are so many places she could be, I cannot feel too badly about choosing the wrong city.”
“She an old girlfriend or something?” Zada asked, flashing her toothy grin again. That made Gideon raise an eyebrow. She was savvy; goblins, in his experience, were not great practitioners of courtship dating. Too slow, too complicated. Wasn’t too off the mark, though, at least as far as Gideon was concerned. He couldn’t fathom Jace’s motivations, but at least as far as his own, he was looking for Chandra because he was worried about her. Her relationship with her own power felt familiar to Gideon, and that made him pity her.
He was, also, supposed to arrest her and bring her in for questioning. But that didn’t matter as much as maybe it should have. Gideon was a hieromancer; away from the constraints of a code of law, or failing that, a code of ethics, his magic had little purpose.
But Gideon had been fucked over before. He was sympathetic to people who were in the process of being totally screwed. And Chandra was cute. Being as chivalrous as he considered himself to be, the least he could do was give her a chance to explain herself.
Jace contracted Zada’s crew, a portion of it at least, to escort them to some place called Sea Gate. Jace’s reasoning was sound enough; it was home to one of the plane’s only libraries, and Chandra had stolen a scroll. They would leave in a day and a half, the quickest turn-around available to book passage. Zada’s price was an odd one. She wanted him to find a place for her, which he agreed he would do. Well, that was Jace’s problem. He’d let the little man figure it out himself.
Zada’s lieutenants got up and shambled off to their cots. One of the humans and the elf took the first watch, probably to keep an eye on Jace and Gideon. Pointless. Gideon hoped it wouldn’t come to fighting. That would just be unfair.
Once they had gone, Zada corked the bottle and got up to leave. She didn’t get too far before she looked over he shoulder.
“What’re they like, those other places?” she asked.
She means planeswalking, came the voice in his head. He could be pedantic, this Jace. No shit, he thought, and hoped Jace heard him.
“Some of them are nice,” Gideon said before Jace could formulate a denial. “Most of them are shit.”
Jace shrugged. Zada nodded, and shuffled off to her cabin. Jace waited until she was in her cot before he sent her off to sleep.
We aren’t supposed to offer confirmation, Jace spoke. He was looking away from Gideon. At the Consortium. It’s a myopic policy. Better to tell people.
Was he embarrassed? Apologizing?
“Whatever,” Gideon said, and left to find an empty cot.
Their journey's first leg took Nissa and Sorin's party through a forest of colossal trees. A network of intersecting paths wound its way through and across branches thick enough around to be trees of their own, and wide enough in some places to accommodate the entire host of allies shoulder-to-shoulder.
Nissa lead the party at a brisk pace, eager to put as much distance as possible between Sorin and herself. Then came Hiba, the allies, and the goblins, and the puma. Sorin brought up the rear, trailing behind, looking hot and miserable as he floated through the air.
Rope threaded through i-hooks followed the pathway, driven directly into the smooth bark of the trees. These guidelines provided some paltry insurance against the gusts of wind and sudden changes in altitude brought on by the Roil, but the kor witch in their party eschewed their use, preferring to sling her own hooks; and while Hiba was content to keep one hand on the rope, Nissa refused all assistance. Stairs carved into tree trunks and ziplines between offshoots provided alternate means of conveyance in those rare places where the limbs of separate trees hadn't naturally grown into one another. Here and there hedrons of all sizes floated amongst the foliage, or else protruded from where trees had grown around them. Below, on the forest floor, baloths lumbered, oblivious to the expeditions carrying on in the canopy.
On the third day Nissa ran headlong into a Shatterskull minotaur and a merfolk lullmage directing a pulley operation to lift a troupe of hurda from the floor to the canopy one at a time. Traffic was deadlocked in every direction. The delay was so severe that eventually the allies in her party just hung their tents where they waited and started up cooking fires.
Nissa was not pleased. She stood at the edge of the camp, leaning on her staff and harrumphing to herself, wishing Hiba or Sorin would notice and ask her what the matter was so she could scream at someone. But nobody asked her. So she continued to sulk.
Night fell. Perhaps an hour passed before the lullmage approached the camp with a cask of brandy.
"Good evening fellow travelers," he said with a wave. "My apologies for the delay. I had hoped to mollify your dissatisfaction with a spot of drink. If that's... agreeable to you?"
Hoshi, the bearded ally from the highlands, laughed and called him over to a seat by the fire. The lullmage's name was Noyan Dar, which impressed the Merfolk and meant precisely nothing to anyone else.
Sorin had been hanging upside-down from a nearby limb, but as soon as he saw people drinking, laughing, and swapping stories, he dissipated into a cloud of bats, reforming at a break in the ring around the fire.
This was his element. His raison d'etre. What was one to do with immortality besides sit by fires on strange planes and swap stories? A thousand thousand fires had withered to ash as he wiled away the hours on drink and laughter and wit. Occasionally he had to eat someone, that was true. Always someone boring, or useless, at least when he could help it. And more occasionally than that, he had to show some upstart planeswalker what for. But he’d always rather talk than fight, preferably someplace comfortable. And drink always helped. Made him seem less spooky, or more mysterious, or romantic. And maybe not quite so old-fashioned; or for that matter, just old.
“I’ll take some of that,” Sorin said, gesturing to Noyan’s bottle. “And when we’re done, I’ve got more for us to share,” and with that, a cask of dark liquid appeared from a shard of moonlight. There was some mild cheering from the assembly, sure now that they would be getting at least a little drunk tonight.
The party needed no prodding to begin spinning yarns. Tales of resourcefulness in the face of danger, stories about heroes and monsters and angels, of the ferocity of the roil and the tenacity of simple adventurers. Hoshi told a story of an old acquaintance who had once killed an angel and wore its crown as a trophy. Sorin was rather partial to angels. In some sense it was all rather Freudian, a creature of darkness idealizing a creature of light, but Sorin had never read Freud, and would have found him tedious besides.
“Sorin!” Hiba called once drink had loosened his tongue and calmed his nerves. “Tell us a tale!”
Sorin smiled, careful not to bare his teeth. “Very well,” he said. One of the allies handed him the bottle and he stood.
“Friends,” said Sorin, looking around the circle. “This is a tale of woe. But it has been so long since I lived this story that I have come to remember it fondly. If you find my telling too fantastic to believe, I urge you to consider it metaphor, or allegory, or even the addled ravings of an old man.”
“What's a metaphor?” asked the eldest goblin.
“Never met a phor I didn't like,” said one of the others, and they collapsed into a fit of laughter. Sorin cleared his throat.
“But do not consider it untrue. Merely that I have lived many lifetimes, and have quite outgrown the need to explain myself. If memory serves, I had just celebrated the one thousandth anniversary of my conversion. I was a young man in his prime. In those days immortality wasn't quite so rare as it is now, at least among my kind. And I don't mean vampires, although I certainly have that to blame for my present longevity. I was an explorer, then, searching an endless catalog of planes for secrets and lost truth.”
“What'sa plane?” asked Azl, the freeblade in their company.
“A good question, friend, but not important right now. Suffice it to say that a plane is a place so far away that you could set sail into the setting sun and come all the way back round to where you started before you ever got there. This plane had the most lovely rolling moors, vast and lonesome, very much like my home plane, a place to which I was in no hurry to return. Black boulders rose from the gentle hills in irregular juts, writ across in ancient—”
“Skip to the good part!” the third goblin shouted.
Sorin laughed, more to let the allies know that no offense had been taken than to express amusement.
“Very well,” said Sorin, “After days of quiet wandering, I found a hamlet tucked away in an outcropping's lee—”
“What's a hamlet?” whispered Mudro, the survivalist, to the goblin next to him.
“So you know how when you got a ham,” the goblin started, holding out his hands to demonstrate, and the two fell to whispering.
“—see if the town had a blacksmith, as I was looking for a sword. I thought I might bring it back with me, to give to my father, as a gesture of forgiveness—”
“He's daft,” said one of the merfolk to Noyan Dar.
“He's a vampire,” Noyan said. “They're all daft. I've never seen a vampire with white hair, though.”
“Maybe he was a kor first,” the merfolk said.
“Receiving the kiss of the bloodchief turns your hair black,” the more learned merfolk said. “Besides, he's got no chin thingies.”
“Barbles,” said Smara, the kor witch. “No barbles means he's juvenile, or a woman. Can't decide.”
Tough crowd. That was alright with Sorin. This story wasn't for them.
“She was an exquisite creature. I'd never seen a kor before her, but I was smitten. As beautiful as she was rugged, hard as granite, smooth as marble, a statue of living alabaster, her eyes pearls, her hair platinum. She was covered in soot, but I could hardly hold that against her, given her profession. I resolved to approach her, but before I'd even opened my mouth, she was pointing at me to turn around.
“ 'Don't do work for 'walkers,' she said. 'Nothing I can do for you you can't do for yourself.'
“She was right in some sense. I could probably have made my own damn sword, but it would still be mine, and I didn't want that. It wasn't the utility of the object I desired, it was the artistry. And in the working of stone and metal, I had never, and have never since, seen her equal. Even the simple tools she made for the villagers were of the finest quality, as close to archetypal as you can imagine. I made up my mind to confess my affection. Perhaps if I explained myself, perhaps if she understood how much I admired her work, she would permit me to remain in her company. All thought of the gift for my father had vanished.
“ ‘Fair creature,’ I said to her, ‘thou art more subtle than the midnight lotus, softer than the sun through the clouds, more noble than than the silver fox in a field of snow,’ and other nonsense of that sort, conjuring each of those things in turn. I pray you don’t think less of me for being so silly, in my younger days I was quite the romantic.
“ ‘Be gone from here, planeswalker,’ she told me. ‘I have no time for your games. I am hard at work, as you can see, and I do not wish to be interrupted.’
“ ‘At least tell me your name, so that I may tell others not to interrupt you.’
“ ‘Nahiri,’ she told me, ‘And you will do no such thing. I bid you leave because there is nothing from me you need. To indulge you is a waste of time. Be gone.’”
“A kor named Nahiri,” said the Smara, perking up at the name. “Named for the first mystic of the stone forge.”
“I suspect you're more or less right about that,” said Sorin before continuing.
“ ‘A token then,' I asked of her, 'that I might remember you, and spread word of the beauty of your work.’ To this she agreed, albeit with some hesitation. Perhaps she believed she would be rid of me. As I watched, she pulled a boulder from the ground, held it before her with only the force of her will. She whispered to the stone and a crack split it in half. She drew out her token: a lotus formed of a dark metal, black as night. I knew at once that it was special, precious, that nothing so pure could stem from anything but love. It was folly, I know. Delusion. But those ailments are common in my kind.”
“All daft,” Noyan said, nodding.
“I bowed low. Had I a beating heart, it would have been aflutter. ‘I shall cherish it always. May I call upon you tomorrow, Nahiri?’ I asked.
“ ‘I should sooner see a dragon than a vampire,’ she said, and waved me away. And you wouldn't believe it, the very next night, a great black dragon with wings of silver descended upon her workshop.
“ 'Fair creature,' it spoke, spewing smoke and ash, 'What wonders have you wrought this day?'
“ 'A lance, to slay you,' Nahiri said, and drew from the stone a molten spear, casting it up into the air at the dragon, piercing its heart. But the noble beast was not deterred. It folded its wings and craned its long neck low. 'I shall cherish it always,' the dragon said. 'May I call upon you tomorrow, Nahiri?'
“Nahiri laughed, hearty and true. 'I should sooner see a gallant knight,' she said, and waved me away.
“A shield for the knight, a coin for the hag, a key for the thief. For the wolf, a muzzle; for the boar, a trough; for the raven, a console—”
“Console?” asked Hoshi.
“It's a little tube you put a message in,” said Sorin, “and then you tie it around the foot of a bird so that you can—”
“That's not what you call that,” said Mudro.
“Well, what would you call it?” Sorin asked.
“It's just called a tube,” Mudro said.
“Very well,” Sorin said, sighing. “She gave me a tube.”
“Yeah, console sounds better,” said Hoshi.
“I thought she gave the raven a tube,” said the third goblin.
“He was the raven,” said his brother, slapping the back of his head.
“It's a metaphor,” the oldest brother said, crossing his arms and nodding.
Sorin shook his head. “Pointless. I'll just skip to the end, then. The villagers began to believe that Nahiri was a plague because of all the monsters and outlanders who appeared every night to talk to her. She found this upsetting, and naturally, blamed me. She might have gone on hating me if not for the intervention of a terrible creature called Ulamog—”
That shut everybody up.
“Ula,” said the scholarly merfolk. “God of the sea. You must have insulted him terribly to rouse his anger.”
“Mangeni,” Smara spat. “Use his true name or not at all.”
“Like this, maybe,” the merfolk said, gesturing at the witch. “Like calling him Mangeni.”
Sorin could tell that this would come to blows. Not because it was a religious conflict, about which he knew fuck-all. Not because it was the expression of some deep-seated racial conflict. Not even because of the alcohol. Sorin knew there would be blood because he knew blood. He heard it swirl and squish in their veins, felt it pulse through their bodies, smelled the changes in their blood chemistries as they exhaled.
A fight here would be a colossal waste of time and resources. Punitive action would need to be taken. Days would be spent searching for other allies to round out their party.
Sorin closed his eyes, focusing on the blood in the bodies around him. He knew enough about people to understand that emotions and the responses of the body didn't have a trigger-reaction relationship. They fed one another. Bend one and you bend both. Sorin breathed deep, projecting his own calm into their bodies. Their heartbeats slowed. The accumulations of stress hormones and adrenaline were cleared before they had a chance to form. Through the capillaries in their lungs, he stilled their breathing, forced them to take longer, deeper breaths.
“Now now,” Sorin said, waving his finger at the merfolk and the kor. “There's no need for any of that. Behave yourselves or I'll do far worse than kill you.”
Only now did he consider what had transpired. He was no linguist, but the names were far too close to be coincidence.
“We're going to talk about your gods,” Sorin said, stroking his chin. “Pretend I don't know anything about your religion. Do you think you can do that, and not get upset at one another?”
They could feel it, what he had done to them. They didn't understand it, but they could feel how he had reached inside of them and turned a part of them off. They were in no hurry to experience that again. Nods all around.
“Excellent. You,” he said, pointing to the merfolk, “Name your gods.”
“Ula, ruler of the deep; sullen and fathomless. Emeria, keeper of the sky; joyful and protective. Cosi, lord of the earth; conqueror and deceiver.”
Sorin shook his head. Then he pointed to Smara. “You're up.”
“Kamsa, sky-mother. Emeria is a place. Talib, earth-shaper. Mangeni, sea-drinker.”
Sorin turned to look at the rest of the allies. “I don't suppose anyone else has something to add?”
“You're all wrong,” said Nissa, stepping near to the fire. “Zendikar has one god. Omnath.”
Sorin pinched his nose in his fingers, cramming shut his eyes to try and maintain his concentration. “And how do you know them, your gods?”
“They come in dreams,” the merfolk said. “Those who see them are compelled to strange action. And it was they who built the ruins that adventurers plunder. It was they who shaped the hedrons, which shape and calm the violence of the roil.”
“Oh dear,” said Sorin. “This is a troubling development.”
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
Jace had let Gideon believe all of this had been Gideon’s idea. There was a kernal of truth in that, which was usually all that was needed for deception to take, magic or otherwise.
Gideon had approached him in his offices on Ravnica, where he worked as an Agent of the Consortium. He wanted Jace to help him find someone, and Jace betrayed no indication that he was looking for that same someone, too. It was easier to keep his composure in this body. None of the old unconscious facial tics had found connections in this alien nervous system, and he intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.
What Gideon’s business was with Chandra mattered not at all to him. But his boss had told him he’d engineered a heist on Kephalai, and that Chandra had double crossed the Consortium and made off with the spoils. Bossman and his robot arm had ‘walked straight into Jace’s office and demanded he remedy the situation.
As if it were that easy.
He knew Chandra, sort of. Knew her well enough to know that he didn’t want to be on the wrong end of her pyromancy. The last time they’d met, they’d been in a crowded market. Jace had tried to confuse her with illusions, painting his own features on every face in the vicinity. He’d hoped she would be discriminate in her target acquisition, hoped that he could use the cover of the crowd of very real people to find another avenue of attack.
She’d burned the entire market to the ground. Hundreds of people incinerated.
Jace worked best with rational people. They were easy to predict. All it took to control them was giving them what they wanted, and what they wanted was always the loudest thing in their mind.
Irrational people, though... sometimes getting what they wanted was devastating to them, and they would react unpredictably, sometimes violently. He wasn’t in a rush to confront someone irrational enough that she’d level a city block full of people to get to one man.
So when Gideon approached him and just said what he wanted, no telepathy required, and then when what he’d wanted had also been what Jace wanted, and then offered to pay him, well, there was nothing to consider. Jace had accepted.
He knew Gideon by reputation. The Consortium had a file on him. As rational as they came, by all accounts, and durable to boot. Useful.
They’d planeswalked to Zendikar once Tezzeret had cleared the op. A little deference went a long way with bossman; respect was what he wanted, and that was easy to fake, no illusions required. Still, Tezzeret had taken his time, which had given Jace a chance to do some research on the plane. He found almost nothing. A backwater plane, wild mana, dangerous. Low population density, an economy based around transporting goods along trade routes between areas of relative safety. Ruins of an ancient civilization, which implied that things hadn’t always been the way they were now.
When they’d appeared in Zulaport, Jace had seized the first mind he could find. The kor in the alley had given him nothing useful with regards to Chandra, but what he’d learned about the plane had been illuminating.
“Was that really necessary?” Gideon asked.
Meaning the mind wipe, probably. Just a precaution, Jace told him, speaking directly into his mind. He almost never spoke out loud if he could help it. It was strictly inferior as far as information security was concerned, and Jace’s telepathy crossed language barriers effortlessly.
“You’re a spooky little dude,” Gideon said, but he needn’t have bothered. Jace could see his disgust clearer than he could hear the words in the crowd.
Jace declined to respond. He was scanning the crowd, searching for anything that might lead him to Chandra, either directly, like a visual memory of her person, or indirectly, like memories of burned places or things. It was like looking for a specific word in a book, flipping past pages after only a glance. It was easier if he let himself drift and trusted his unconscious mind to highlight what was useful.
Lots of memories of fire and burning, actually. Not a very good search key, after all. He swam through a pool of shifting images, volcanoes and brush fires and camp stoves and meteor showers. Not what he wanted.
“—any time now,” Gideon was saying something to him. Jace opened his eyes, and realized Gideon’s hand was on his chest. His partner was facing away from him, his bizarre weapon—sural, he called it—extended, wavering slightly as mana coursed through it, as though it were grass in the wind. They were surrounded by—sellswords, they thought of themselves—into whom they had inadvertently run. Or he had, actually, his body on autopilot while he searched the memories of the city’s inhabitants. They were in an alley.
You want to leave now, before this gets ugly, he said into their minds. Some of them reacted, but none of them broke away. Their group dynamic was holding them together, strange voices in their heads be damned. Didn’t want to look weak. Had to find the leader.
Jace took inventory: a minotaur, hungry before he was anything else; multiple humans, who wanted to look strong and tough in front of each other, a glimmer of romance between two of them; a kor, awaiting the chance to challenge his captain for leadership; an elf, trying to substitute this group for the family that had cast her out; a goblin, poised on a roof to his left, watching the proceedings, her thoughts on how valuable Jace and Gideon’s clothes were. If he was a betting man...
He turned to look at the goblin. I’d like to hire you, he said. The goblin smiled.
“You can’t afford us,” the goblin shouted down. The circle of sellswords edged closer.
Apparitions, ghostly imitations of Gideon, sprung into being around the pair of planeswalkers. They were imperfect, hastily made, but they only needed to look intimidating. Another copy, this one of Jace himself, appeared on the roof beside the goblin.
“I can give you anything you can think of as payment,” his copy said aloud. The double opened one hand to display a goblin made of stone, then opened the other hand to reveal a map. Images supplied by the sellsword’s boss, ones Jace didn’t think it prudent to try and make sense of.
The goblin waved her hand through the illusion, dispersing it like so much smoke. “Just like a mer witch,” she said. “Always promising, but all you get is drowned.” She turned and cupped her hand to shout down to her compatriots: “Just fakes! Thin as smoke.”
A few of the sellswords smiled, and swept their weapons through the duplicates, finding them just as insubstantial as the goblin had found his duplicate on the roof. Jace sighed.
Fine, he spoke into the goblin’s mind, call them off or I’ll kill them.
“Just words,” said the goblin. “If you could do that, you would have already.”
Jace, the real Jace, pointed at one of the sellswords, the kor, and put him to sleep. He fell forward onto his face. The pointing wasn’t necessary, but it made for a more dramatic effect.
The other sellswords backed away. The goblin on the roof smiled wider.
“Allright,” she said. “We can discuss payment at our hideout.” She hoisted herself over the edge of the roof and let herself down onto a stack of crates. She scrabbled down them and passed into the ring the sellswords had formed.
Gideon tensed and turned to face her, but Jace, speaking directly into Gideon’s mind and in the most polite way he could manage, told him to slow his roll.
“Zada,” said the goblin, reaching up a little hand for Jace to shake. Her name.
“Jace,” said Jace, still aloud, for the benefit of the other sellswords. “That’s Gideon. My bodyguard.” Gideon shot him a dirty look but kept quiet. “Your fellow there,” he pointed to the kor again, “Is just asleep.”
“Saw him breathing from the roof,” said Zada. “Not why I’m not fighting you.”
“Oh?” Jace asked.
“World’s a dangerous place,” Zada said. “Haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in ten years.”
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
Elsewhere, and by Total Narrative Coincidence, two travelers appeared in an alley. They were in a place called Zulaport, a haven for thievery, piracy, and general roguishness. That they were strangely dressed and ill-acquainted with local custom could not have been less conspicuous, for Zulaport attracted all manner of persons looking for somewhere to hide, and for that matter, contained mostly drunks.
One such inebriate, a hapless kor named Nirhu, stumbled into the alley to relieve himself and came face-to-face with the two interlopers.
One, near a head shorter than his companion, wore a cloak around his shoulders and drew a hood over his head upon being discovered, casting a shadow over his pale complexion, his sunken features and strange facial tattoos. The other was a swarthy sort, long of hair and possessed of a bulky ruggedness that reminded the kor of a bluff where once he had hung his tent.
Gideon, the taller man, checked the bottom of his boot, and didn't like what he found. "Nice going, Jace," he said to his fellow, who said nothing. Rather, this Jace made eye contact with the stumbling kor, and trapped him in a piercing gaze.
Something Nirhu was ill-equipped to explain then occurred. A third man wearing Jace’s clothes, but somehow sharper, brighter, more real than real, appeared before him, his hand outstretched. As Nirhu watched this man’s face blurred and twisted into a familiar shape framed in long white hair and a kor’s chin barbles.
“There he is,” said the apparition, his voice echoing with uncertain memory. “Been too long, boy.”
Recognition and confusion assailed Nirhu by turns. This shimmering man, the kor knew him, and knew him to be dead. Somehow that didn’t matter. Nirhu took his hand and the apparition pulled him into an embrace. Then the apparition placed a hand upon his shoulder, his touch lighter than air, heavy as stone.
“I need your help, boy,” said the apparition, and Nirhu nodded. Anything.
Gideon crossed his arms. “Are you finished?” he asked. Something about Jace’s routine rubbed him the wrong way. A lot of things rubbed Gideon the wrong way.
In lieu of an answer, Jace raised two fingers, and swiped them across the air in front of him, as if clearing dust from a pane of glass. Nirhu collapsed.
“Was that really necessary?” Gideon asked, shaking his head and stepping towards the alley’s entrance. Jace gave no answer, and followed after.
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
Sorin returned with a posse of allies: three human adventurers, a kor witch, two merfolk, a large stone cat laden with baggage, and a trio of goblins, one of whom was the pushy fellow Nissa had earlier rejected. Together with herself, Sorin, and Hiba, their expedition now numbered 12.
Nissa glowered at the little goblin, who winked at her.
“Him,” Nissa said to Sorin, indicating the goblin with the butt of her staff, “Cut him loose.”
“Why?” asked Sorin, absorbed in an inspection of their supply manifest.
“He’s trouble.”
“Oh,” said Sorin. He looked up from his checklist to where the goblins loitered. “Good.”
“Good?” Nissa said, eyes wide and nostrils flaring.
“I only hired them in case I get hungry. Everyone else is too useful to eat.”
Nissa had nothing to say to that; she found it equally gratifying and abhorrent. If the goblins had heard, they didn’t show it.
“Do you have any more business here?” Sorin asked. A moment passed before Nissa realized he was talking to her.
“Now you ask me? You didn’t seem to care what I was doing before you got here.”
“I’m trying to be nice.”
“Forget it. I don’t want charity from a vampire. Let’s get on with it.”
“Okiedoke,” said Sorin. He put both of his pinkies into his mouth, right between his exaggerated fangs, and whistled.
“Hello friends!” said Sorin to the assembled allies. “I think it’s important in situations like this to get to know you a little better, and to lay down some ground rules.”
To this there was a general lack of response: a shifting of weight from one foot to the other, a roll of the eyes, scratching of the chin barbs, a stray cough.
The vampire cleared his throat. “My name is Sorin Markov, and along with my associate Nissa Revane here, we’ll be leading this expedition to the Eye of Ugin. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s going to be dangerous, but you all seem like solid blokes so I’m sure we’ll be alright. The usual arrangement applies: you’ll be paid for each day of work, in the case you need to drop from the expedition for any reason, and those who stick it out to the end will have equal stake in whatever treasure we find. I myself will not be taking any shares so you’ve got that going for you. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” said one of the humans, raising his hand. “Where are we going?”
Sorin blinked. “To the Eye of Ugin,” he said, slower this time.
“And where is that?”
“That’s a fantastic question. The first leg of our journey will be to Halimar and the majestic city of Ior.”
"You've got the wrong crew for that," said one of the merfolk. "Me and my buddy here are the only divers you've got, and you don't look like you can hold your breath for all that long."
A chuckle bubbled and then dissipated. Sorin considered vaporizing the merfolk, but then his fellow spoke up, a much more bookish sort.
"As you know, Mr. Markov, Ior is at the bottom of the Halimar sea."
"Well fuck me sideways," Sorin said with a shrug. "Where do you keep your books?"
"The fuck do you want with books?" asked the kor.
The bookish merfolk spoke again: "There is an extensive library at Sea Gate."
"Sea Gate?" Sorin said, straining to remember. "I remember a palisade outside the city. With a great Pharos rising above to warn the junks and galleys."
“Pharos?" asked the first merfolk. "You mean the lighthouse?”
“I guess so. The lighthouse. Anybody else?”
One of the goblins raised his hand. “We wonders, me bruddas and me, who gets da bosses share.”
“Technically you all get it.”
The goblins thought this over, muttering to each other. Then the designated speaker raised his hand again.
“You may continue to speak,” said Sorin.
“Me bruddas and me, we fink dis word “teknikally” meens we getting fugged. And we dun take to getting fugged.”
Sorin turned to Nissa and mouthed “Fugged?” to which the elf responded by making a circle out of her thumb and forefinger, and then moving her forefinger on her opposite hand back and forth into and out of that circle.
“Oh,” mouthed Sorin, turning back to the goblins. “Gentlemen I understand your concerns and I wish greatly to mollify them. You can all split her shares too,” he said, pointing to Nissa.
“Hey!” she shouted.
“Sorry Miss Revane, couldn’t be helped,” Sorin said with a shrug. Nissa kicked one of his boots, but if Sorin felt anything he didn’t show it. Then, to the goblins again, “Does that satisfy you?”
The goblins were busy counting on their fingers, but after a moment came to an agreement: no. The representative said as much to Sorin.
“I could just kill one of you now, and you could split his share.”
“Dun be silly. We gonna do that afterward anyways.”
Sorin cradled his head in his palm. “Fine,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You can come or not come. I have nothing else to offer you.”
The goblin representative and his cohort whispered frantically amongst themselves.
“Ok,” said the goblin, “We gonna renegotiate when we finish and you see how useful we was.”
“Sure. Whatever,” said Sorin. Then he turned to the rest of the expedition. “Any more objections, questions, comments, concerns?”
“Yeah,” said another of the humans. “We going somewhere or are we going to stand out here and talk all morning?”
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
“Wait!” called Sorin, wrenching his legs free from the dirt. Nissa did not wait. Sorin took a single step up into the air, floating a foot’s length from the mud of Graypelt, and drifted after her. “You say this plane is under your charge,” Sorin said once he’d caught up to her and her chosen. “The last time I was here Zendikar had a different protector. Her name was Nahiri, and she made those.”
Sorin pointed past Nissa to where a hedron, perhaps the size of a small drake, lay half-buried in the earth behind a tent.
Nissa shook her head. “Vampires. You’re all the same. You are a liar and a tedious creature,” she said, quickening her pace to escape the gliding Sorin.
“Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time someone has said that to me.”
“Then why don’t you leave? Hiba!” Nissa shouted, breaking away from her path, her chosen lumbering after her. “Hiba, we’re going!”
A short, mousy-looking Tajuru elf, lately involved in bartering maneuvers with a grizzled human trader, stood bolt upright at the sound of Nissa’s voice. He had a coil of rope around one shoulder and wore a vest packed with pockets and pouches.
“Hiba!” said Nissa as she neared the smaller elf.
“Mistress,” said Hiba, stuttering slightly. “I was just concluding negotiations here.”
“No, he weren’t,” said the trader. Hiba released a nervous chuckle.
“This guy bothering you?” said the chosen, but Nissa waved him off.
“Forget it. We’ll resupply further along in Ondu. We have enough food for a few more days.”
“But—“ said Hiba.
“We have to go. Before—” said Nissa.
“Before what?” said Sorin, who had caught up with her.
“Shut up,” said Nissa. Hiba’s eyes widened when he saw the floating vampire.
“Who is that?” he asked, his words dripping with fright.
“That’s Sorin,” said Nissa.
“Boo,” said Sorin. Hiba yelped.
Nissa whirled to face him, raising a finger to a spot between the vampire’s eyes. “Go away,” she said. “Get out of here.”
Sorin stiffened. “Not until my business is concluded. And for that I need you.”
“Why do you need me? What have I done to deserve you?”
“I told you. You say you’re Zendikar’s protector, and until I find Nahiri you’ll have to do.”
“Baloth shit. You headed straight for me a soon as I got here.”
“Oh. Yes. Well, do you see any other planeswalkers around?”
Nissa inhaled sharply at being outed so. Hiba raised an eyebrow.
“Plainswalkers? Lots of people walk plains here. Mostly the kor. I’ve never really had the stomach for it myself. More of a tree guy.”
Sorin turned slowly to look at Hiba, and stared at him with a blank expression until the elf nodded and backed up a step. Then, turning back to Nissa, Sorin inclined his head and waved the fingers on his free hand in the air beside his head. “Well. As I was saying, I need another planeswalker because Zendikar is in graaave daaangerrr!”
Nissa tapped her foot. Hiba gasped. The trader snorted. The chosen picked his nose.
“Alright,” Nissa said finally. “I’ll bite. You’ve got until the count of ten. One.”
“Until what? Am I supposed—“
“Two.”
“—explain everything while you sit there—“
“Three.”
“—and just count on your fingers?”
“Four.”
“Okay! Shit. A while ago—“
“Five.”
“—Nahiri, Ugin, and I lured a trio—“
“Six.”
“Of ancient, plane-devouring monsters—“
“Seven.”
“To this plane and locked them in—“
“Eight.”
“—a box and now I think the box is leaking.”
Nissa scowled at Sorin. “You did what?”
“You’re going to have to trust me that it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I trust you about as far as I can throw you.”
“As a vampire I’m capable of flying great distances.”
“Ahem,” said the trader. “Are you folks going to buy anything?”
“Yes!” said Sorin, turning to face him. “We need provisions for a journey?”
“Ok,” said the trader. “Where ya goin?”
Sorin tapped his chin with an index finger. “I’m not sure,” he said, turning to Nissa. “Where are we?”
“Zendikar,” said Nissa.
“Yes I’m aware of that. But where are we? I was aiming for Ondu but I must have missed.”
“This is Ondu.”
“Oh. Where’s the city?
“What city?”
“Oh dear,” said Sorin. “This is a troubling development. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Eye of Ugin?”
“No,” said Nissa. She glanced down at her outstretched fingers and began paring her fingernails with a file.
“It sounds familiar,” said Hiba. “And not because you just said it just now.”
Sorin leaned down until his face was level with HIba’s, hovering a nose’s length away, his eyes narrowed. “Who is even talking to you?” asked Sorin. Hiba fell backwards into the mud. Then Sorin returned to the trader. “Let’s assume it’s a long journey. What passes for currency around here?”
“Unique or interesting artifacts. Useful knowledge. Favors.”
Sorin nodded, then pulled a heavy velvet coinpurse from thin air. “How about gold?”
“Too heavy,” said the trader, shaking his head. “Not useful.”
“Promissory notes?”
“Do I look stupid to you?” the trader said with a scowl.
“For the sake of negotiations I’m going to decline to answer your question.”
Sorin looked to Nissa, who stifled a snort. “Miss Revane,” he said, and indicated Hiba. “How was your man here going to pay for your supplies?”
“If you’re wondering if I’m going to loan you money, the answer is absolutely not.”
Sorin put his face to his palm and rubbed it around. “You’re all so bloody difficult,” he said. Then he grabbed the trader by his neck and pulled him off the ground. “You,” he said. “I’m trying to be nice. Think of something you want, anything, and if it’s within my power to get it for you it’s yours. If you don’t, I’ll exsanguinate you and make boots from your hide. It makes no difference to me which you choose.”
The trader blinked. If he was at all intimidated by being held by his throat a foot off of the ground, he didn’t betray it. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always wanted a nice tea set. Something durable but elegant, in case I want to entertain. Can’t seem to justify just buying one, but the clay ones I’ve had always break.”
Sorin set him down. “Done,” he said, snapping his fingers. A set of polished silver cups, saucers, spoons, and a pot appeared in the trader’s hands.
“Kor blimey!” he said, flabbergasted.
“I’d, uh, I’d be careful with those,” Sorin said, twiddling his fingers. Then he plucked Hiba from where he was still planted in the mud and set him upright, giving him a perfunctory dust-off with his hand.
“Now,” Sorin continued, “Continue securing our provisions. I’m going to staff our expedition.” Then he drifted away.
Nissa thought hard about leaving, about storming off with Hiba in tow, out of Graypelt, out of Ondu, hell, out of Zendikar completely, to some other less troublesome place. But at the end of the day, Zendikar was her home, and it would not do to leave this Sorin creature to his own devices.
“Fuck me,” she said.
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
Nissa wrinkled her nose in a subconscious gesture of distaste, an expression she made more and more often of late. She was Joraga, an aspiring Warcaller, a true being of the wild and a consummate predator. These Kor-loving Tajuru trash in Graypelt subsisting on the stipends of explorers were chained beasts, no better than slaves. Their meek complaisance and jovial demeanor disgusted her.
She stood at the edge of the market, chin upon hands folded around her staff, watching the throng of intrepid venturers form alliances and plans for expeditions into the wild, into the roil, smiling and laughing when the only thing that waited for them was death by their own ineptitude.
A goblin disturbed her vehement rumination. “She wants a guide, yes? To the Pillar Fields of Murasa? Maybe the Teeth of Akoum?”
“Piss off,” said Nissa with a sneer, refusing to look down at the interloper.
“She haggles,” said the goblin, stroking his chin, “Smart elf haggles. Smart elf picks—”
Nissa kicked him. Knocked flat into the mud, the goblin began spitting curses. He plucked a knife from his belt but before he could do anything further a buff Joraga elf emerged from the tent behind them wielding a heavy two-handed sword.
“This guy bothering you?” her chosen asked Nissa. She looked down at the goblin, whose anger had yielded to terror, and watched him scramble around in the dirt before dashing away.
“This is tedious,” she said to the elf. “Tell Hiba to finish his business so we can leave this pit of filth.” Nissa waved her hand and the other elf made himself scarce.
Then something strange happened.
A man appeared before her, sprung whole from a lance of midday moonlight, cloaked in mist. A flutter of screeching bats erupted from the place where he had appeared. His skin was pallid, his features chiseled, as if hewn from stone, with hair as white as a kor’s. He was dressed peculiarly, in black, with a sword at his side and a red gem upon his breastplate. His eyes, when he turned to see Nissa watching him, smoldered with ancient fire.
“Greetings mortals!” he exclaimed, arms spread wide. All around him the stunned gazes of the members of nascent expeditions returned to their various businesses. A life on Zendikar is enough to take the surprise out of nearly anything.
He was unquestionably a vampire, and Nissa hated vampires. Worse, the method of his entrance meant he, like herself, was a planeswalker. And Nissa hated planeswalkers.
Nissa averted her eyes and did not move from where she was perched upon her staff. Perhaps if she ignored him this stranger would leave. But he did not. Instead he made straight for her with a bard’s swagger and a baloth’s bravado. In one hand he held a strange black pole wrapped about with fabric, and as he approached he thumbed a device which set the pole in motion. Nissa stepped back, grasping her staff and pulling its full length from where it had been stuck in the mud, and once again the burly Joraga elf with the two-handed sword emerged from the tent behind her.
“Stay where you are, traveler,” she said.
The stranger’s device finished unfolding, becoming a canopy of black fabric, embroidered with swans, which he held aloft above his head.
“I beg your pardon,” said the pale-faced man. “But you seem to be the person to ask: where can I find Nahiri the Lithomancer?”
“This guy bothering you?” asked the chosen once more, brandishing his sword. The vampire looked at him for a moment, and then with a gesture reduced him to dust. It was all very sudden, and by the time Nissa turned to look at what he’d done the chosen was already blowing away with the wind.
Nissa waved her staff and the ground between her and the vampire planeswalker split apart, separating Nissa, the tent, and the patch of grass upon which they stood from the rest of the Graypelt encampment, so that between her and the stranger there was now a rock-strewn ravine.
“Leave this place!” Nissa called across the divide. “Zendikar is my charge!”
The vampire brought up his hand again, but this time he ran it through his hair. Then he waved.
“Hey, look,” he shouted. “I think we got off on the wrong foot just now. I’m not here to fight. I’m looking for somebody.”
Nissa narrowed her eyes but did not move.
“I’m sorry about your elf guy,” said the vampire. “I always forget about the mana thing here.”
Nissa shrugged, and with a more delicate motion of her staff rejoined the split earth. Now face to face once again, the vampire offered his hand.
“The name’s Sorin,” said the vampire with a smile that bared his fangs. “Sorin Markov. Delighted to meet you, miss…?”
“Nissa Revane,” said Nissa, declining to shake. “Warcaller of the Joraga.” A bit of a bluff, but it wasn’t as if Sorin would know the difference. She turned and beckoned to the tent behind her, where to Sorin’s amusement an elf indistinguishable from the one he’d just destroyed emerged. The elf reached out his hand and shook Sorin’s in Nissa’s stead.
“That’s a neat trick,” said Sorin, looking the new elf up and down.
“What is that stupid thing you’re holding?” Nissa asked.
“What, this?” said Sorin, twirling the canopy. “It’s a parasol. It’s so very bright here.”
“Then why are you here, planeswalker? What do you want?” asked Nissa, sinking her staff into the mud once again.
“Oh, I want lots of things. Money, power, status; somebody to whisper secrets to in the middle of the night.” At this he took Nissa’s hand and brought it up to his lips. “Some fine female company; a mox or two.”
Nissa pressed against her staff and the ground beneath Sorin liquefied, submerging him in mud up to his knees.
“Try again,” said Nissa, turning her head to look beneath Sorin’s parasol.
“My goodness,” said Sorin, giggling in spite of himself. “Why yes of course. As I said, I’m looking for Nahiri the Lithomancer.”
“Never heard of her,” said Nissa.
“Oh dear,” said Sorin. “This is a troubling development.”
Nissa grabbed her staff from the ground and turned heel to walk away with her chosen following closely behind.
[This is fanfiction. I don’t own these characters. They belong to Wizards of the Coast. I write this because I think the official stuff takes itself too seriously, and misses some of the absurdity of the planeswalker lifestyle. The purpose of this blog is fun. If you aren’t having fun I encourage you to seek it elsewhere.]
