The planeswalker could feel his mana and his powers fading as the servant sucked the jugular's blood. The creature swallowed the fluid of his mortal body in large swallows, in spasms of an irrational, blind, wildly objective hunger. As he tried in vain to focus on his distant mana bonds and recall the most banal of magic to get rid of the bloodsucker, he cursed his own nostalgic nature. Why should he have maintained this worldly, fragile and vulnerable form? He was a god. His power was unlimited. His knowledge was vast. He could have manifested whatever physical body he wanted. But why, damn it, did he remain so fond of this miserably weak, pathetic form from his distant times as a mortal?
His opponent began to approach, walking through the swampy terrain in slow but steady steps, not loosing the magic that kept him submissive even a bit. No more wearing his chained mask, his expression was a mixture of controlled anger and contentment, his eyes glowing with mana beneath his scabbed face. His obsidian armor, though dirty by the rotting loam of the mire and by the blood of several of the creatures conjured during the duel, also emitted a flickering, pale and morbid glow. Possibly the reflection of the last rays of the sun hidding behind the nearby hill and the castle at its summit, spreading the shadow of its bulwark. Or it could be just a glimpse of the last tibbits of mana leaking from his dying body. His senses faded. It made no difference anymore.
Striking with the hilt of his sword, the geared planeswalker took his servant away from its victim, making it pull large strips of skin and flesh in its fangs. He crouched over the dying, motionless body of his subjugate, putting one knee on his chest, and one hand on his bloody throat. This can only mean one thing, he said in a low but perfectly clear and audible voice. The inevitable happened. I won.
In a slow, steady move, he tipped the blade into the defeated opponent's stomach and pushed it in, then up, causing him to spit out living blood until the blade came out through his mouth. The lifeforce of the beaten man began to pour forth from his spark like a newfound fountain, and the victor came to drink it, delighting in power, and rejoicing in victory. Power. If there's a most valuable prize in the entire Multiverse, it's omnipotence. Be in control of everything. Being above all else. And anywhere, anytime, blood is the universal currency that pays for it.
Are you done? The female voice, full of austerity, sounded astonishingly imposing for an inquiry. The planeswalker in black armor turned in its direction. The long, golden hair of his inquisitor gleamed lightly in the last rays of daylight. Her expression was stern, harsh, disapproving. She was solemn and beautiful. Like an angel. He rose in readiness. But what?... He thought of the quickest spell, the fastest attack he could use. Damn it. How did he not notice her approach? How was it possible, to be caught off guard this way? No, it was not, that was impossible. It could not happen to him.
The blinding flash came before he could finish his thoughts. And then, silence.
From the ride on the bulwark, the Baron stared at the horizon. Motionless for hours, immersed in his thoughts. Time and again he looked away to see some movement, some passants, some light fading and some new flashing in the barony that surrounded the castle. The familiar sounds and smells the cold wind brought to his senses produced a strange mixture of feelings: a pleasant satisfaction and confidence, and an uncomfortable irritation. His domain was admirably broad, and unquestionably strong. But it was also eerily incomplete. Unforgiven.
For a couple months he did not send reinforcements to the patrols on the edge of Aysen. The last troops sent through the portal had been particularly numerous, and still none of its scouts, warriors, and shamans had yet returned. It was necessary to recompose the numbers before deepening any military initiative. But it was also necessary to do so with tranquility and parsimony. Resources were not exactly abundant at this time. Peasants and villagers have been through a low birth rate over the past decade, and the paladin order has been relatively successful in segregating and concealing potential new acquisitions.
Numbers. Mortals multiply like pests in a cereal warehouse, abundant and hidden inside crevices, far from the eye of the farmer. It is a strength of theirs, no doubt about this. A primitive and pathetic force for sure, but it can not, and should never be despised. We can not afford that. So many prey are needed to feed the predator. And she knows that too, that hypocritical lover of mortals. She always knew. As she also knows exactly how to exploit this strenght to achieve her goals. An old and uncomfortable inconvenience. The strength of one lies in the weakness of the other. Of course, two can always play the same game, but favorably breaking the delicate balance of forces required will, resources, and patience. The Willow had the ephemeral numbers at her side. The Baron had the time.
Sharel! The name echoed through the nearest tower window. Even after all these years, he never understood its meaning, or its history, or why she called him that way. But that was never important for him. The interesting part was that she always called him during her delusions and her crises of hysteria, and these were usually quite productive times, as well as lots of fun at almost every occasion.
Hello Grandma. The sarcasm in his voice, repeated over the centuries, sounded natural, even affectionate. Here I am. What do you want to talk about today? She responded with a guttural and rough sound, but she did not seem to have heard the salutation anyway, so that sound could mean anything. Her fragile, squat, wormy figure reflected well the senile and deteriorated state of her mind. But it did not even indicate the brilliance hidden under layers and layers of dementia, accumulated over countless generations. Her name was Ravi. It was written in each of the tomes, on each scroll and manuscript carefully stored on the tower's shelves for hundreds of years.
Ravi approached one of the dusty shelves, pulled out a particularly long parchment, and handed it to the Baron. Tanned, faded leather no longer indicated its raw material, but the strand of human hair that held it tied gave a clue to it. She had worked on it recently. The ink still emanated an ocher, ferrous odor, and it was still vivid and intense, with ruby shades still clearly distinguishable. Her handwriting was frighteningly precise. Each rune meticulously aligned, each drawing and each diagram traced with the accuracy and delicacy of an artist. This parchment was not like most of the others. It did not contain the words for ancestral spells, or rituals for powerful curses. The Baron had a particular appreciation for works like this one. Less privileged minds who could interpret the witch's foreign writing would only see meaningless drawings and disjointed words there, the works of some maddened visions of an old madwoman. Yet, the Baron saw there the patterns of memories. Much more than the ordinary memories of an ordinary life. Those words told a story. An extraordinary story, of expeditions to distant worlds, of wars and of conquests. Lessons of knowledge, and precious opportunities to achieve power.
The Baron himself possessed the knowledge which the majority lacked. He himself had been brought into this world, coming from another distant place. He remembered his homeland, where his sovereign line dominated. He remembered with satisfaction the pleasures of being part of a dominant and undisputed elite, enjoying among equals the powers over life and death. He was resent at being removed from his position without his consent, at being unwillingly used as a servant, manipulated and treated like a mortal. But he also saw in it not only reality, but opportunity, one which until then had been unknown to him. His previous life did not live up to his abilities. There were much bigger domains and trophies to be won. His lineage could reign absolute, not only on one, but on all worlds. And he would no longer be brood, but the progenitor of the greatest dynasty who had ever existed and would ever exist. The opportunity to make the Sengir Dynasty omnipresent and omnipotent was within his grasp. It was up to him to take it.
Sengir approached the old sorceress, took her rugged, cracked face in his hands, and stared into her gray and disheveled eyes, half-covered by folds of flaccid, parched skin. He saw in them more than the memories and madness of many centuries. He saw his own reflection, and far beyond it. Most of all, he saw a promise. And he would stick to it. He then kissed her lips, her cheeks, and her forehead. Thank you, Grandma. It's always a pleasure to have these conversations with you. I'm going to leave you with your privacy now, I just remembered I have a very important meeting. I'm going to meet an old friend and can't let her waiting.
As he left the room, he glanced at the old woman, and he had the impression of a smile on her face. But that was not important. Coming from Ravi's dementia, a smile could mean anything.
The dwarves in this world were identical to those they knew from the homelands. They were smart, but very stubborn. They were impetuous and organized, determined, and ironically proud for a race of mortals. Even their physical appearance, their clothes, their mannerisms were quite similar to those. It seemed safe to assert their kinship, even though they were only found here around the portal. Their blood tasted equally strong and displeasuring, and they presented an inconvenient resistance to sangromancy. They weren't anything collaborative, either. They presented the same natural tendency to quarrel among themselves and to rebel against their masters. Generally, they needed to be properly nullified before being put into use. Under normal conditions, they would be far from good servants, much less food.
But those were not normal conditions. The troops were in an inhospitable land, in an arid and sparsely populated region. Their resources were very scarce. Mesas chastised by an inclement sun did not provide adequate shelter for a breed of nocturnal predators of pale skin and delicate, highly specialized senses. The dwarf refuges they could locate in the area did not offer the best in accommodations either, but due to their precarious situation, they had been serving just fine as makeshift shelters.
Zanon had recently been promoted to lieutenant, receiving a personal appointment from Captain Veldrane. She fell in the Baron's favor on her second foray into the frontier, when her detachment of patrolmen managed to intercept a caravan of rebels escorted by a troop of paladins who practically equaled them in number, killing half of them, and redeploying almost thirty mortal fugitives to the Barony. She then began to command a contingent three times greater. Appointed to lead the research expedition into the dwarf portal, she received guidance and training from the Baron himself. She attended his mission with much interest, unlike most of his commandeers. The warriors took the mission for a delirium, a suicidal act motivated by caprice and madness. Still, they would not dare oppose their master's will. It was still preferable to risk an uncertain adventure, to face the exemplary punishment of the Sovereign of the Night.
What is it that you bring us this afternoon, Malakir? Some are even uglier than these dwarves, and almost as ugly as you. Bring them where I can look at them closely.
We saw others of these natives during the raid, sir. These white skinned people call themselves 'kor'. The deformed and stinking dwarves are called goblins. There are also hotbloods among them, though the ones here are very different from the Barony's hotbloods. We caught this group here on our return, snooping around the camp. And coming closer to the liutenant, he whispered: and whether you're my immediate superior or not, Zanon, I'm going to tear your tongue out through your nose the next time you call me ugly, you damn barrack rat. Zanon smiled at her friend.
The group of new captives was really unusual. A kor woman and a man, both defiant-looking, and a third that were quite strong, but nullified for causing a little more trouble than the others. Also three frightened goblins with apprehensive expressions in their faces. They seemed to be two females and a male, but that was a little difficult to assure. The commander bellowed at a group examining one of the strange carved monoliths of the place. Hey! Anowon! Come here! The shaman approached the leader lightly, solicitously. He spoke little, and maintained the solemn posture typical of the bloodwizards. Take a look at these strange new friends we just made here, Anowon. I barely understood what the stonediggers were saying, but with these new comrades here, I do not even know where to start. I need an interpreter. The shaman frowned as he looked at the goblins, but relaxed as the commander nodded to indicate the kor couple knelt behind them.
The bloodwizard pointed his finger at the kor woman, and two warriors lifted her by tied arms, prostrating her before him. The prisoner's gaze remained defiant, but she shifted it to the floor and lowered her head, as if realizing what was to follow. Put her on her feet. Even standing, she did not look at him. Anowon caught her by the stuck hair, and pulled her head back. He began to examine the shapes of her jaw, her neck, her jugular. He exposed his white fangs.
The kor man leapt over the three goblins toward the nearest warrior, plucking the blade from his waist and nailing it to the neck of the other warrior at his side. He did not know who his captors were, but they obviously believed that ropes would keep a kor prisoner. The kor woman took advantage of the distraction and also released as she grabbed the dagger from one of the takers and kicked the wizard away, then escaping through the pair of surprised warriors.
But the mutuous ignorance continued providing surprises, as the kor also did not imagine their captors would be as agile and swift as themselves. Aysha, no! The male kor screamed at the sight of the invading boss's blade coming out of his mate's chest. As the blade slided back, she dropped to her knees again, this time her challenging gaze giving place to a fearful expression and a silent help request. The chief pulled her head back again, and the reddened blade slid across the white skin of her neck. An instant and a kick that broke his leg later, the other kor was also on his knees, with two warriors holding him brutally and a third pressing the tip of a blade to his heart, realeasing a trickle of red. Zanon approached the kor, calling Anowon closer again. The cattle here bite even harder than ours. She punched the kor's nose, draining even more of the precious liquid. Do your job, wizard.
The visions provided by the mortal's blood were impressively vivid and clear, as if the shaman himself had always been present within the memories. Anowon had read the memories of other explorers before, but never in his lifetime had he ever known such remotely rich experiences. Zendikar is how the natives call this world. It is a pulsating and wild world, very different from our exhausted homeland. The magic here flows from every chink of rock, and emanates from every piece of ground. I felt it when we arrived, and now I see. My sangromancy has never been so potent as it is now. There is even more power emanating from these monoliths, they are worshiped by the inhabitants here. They seem to have some kind of connection with their gods. And this place, Guul Draz. It resembles our places of power, and is far more suitable to us than this sunny aridity. There are also several agglomerations of hotbloods in the surroundings, including more different types of them. 'Elves'. We need to find the place, Commander. That's where we'll have our best chances here.
Great, and that's what we'll do without loss of time. Zanon looked at the goblins, who watched as quiet as if they expected the conquerors to forget them. Malakir, I want your detachment ready to leave in a few hours. You'll choose four or five experienced bloodwizards to accompany you. Set aside the minimum necessary supplies for the first few days of an expedition, you'll have to turn out with whatever you find on your way during the next few months. You will take these little friends of us for a ride. I want you to find this place, this Guul Draz.
Yes sir. Should my messengers meet you later in this same place?
They should, my friend. I do not intend to venture all our troops unnecessarily into this unknown world until we can be well installed and strong. In addition, we are making history here. We are building something that will last for a long time, and this calls for a monument to match. We have here these power rocks, and the stonediggers are good with this kind of work. Turning toward the now almost dark horizon, Zanon smiled, remembering the Baron's dream and teachings. His Dynasty would rule all the worlds until the end of history, and she was he the one who was taking the first step around it.
Go now, Malakir. The time is right. As for me, I have a temple and an empire to start building.
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