"Today’s story started long ago, so I’ll take you with me as we move back through the years, the Aether, and the Planes. It starts nearly four hundred years ago, on the continent of Otaria, near the Balshan Bay. Around there, at that time, a child was born.”
“Well, of course, more than one child was born four centuries ago near that bay, but the baby we’re talking about will be the focus of our story. But first, let’s talk about the parents of that particular child. They were aven, two eagles loving each other amongst their own. What they did not know was that their respective ancestors were used by foreigners in an experiment. Ancient sorcerers wanted to create strong warriors for a great war by breeding people. They were doing the same thing where they were from, but this particular group came to Otaria, and, amongst other things, tried their breeding with races they had never encountered before, like aven. They didn’t like the results, so they returned to their lands some decades later, but thanks to time and coincidences, their tests would have lasting results in one person or another. So, when these two parents loved each other, the child that was born was something close to what the foreigners wanted to create. Some others like her, humans and other races, would appear later, but maybe you already know the story of Kamahl and his sister Jeska.”
“Our young aven had particular talents, and was soon sent to Balshan’s school. Eagles tended to become warriors, but the gift the young girl showed in magic was undeniable. The school she went to was one of knowledge and magic. The mages that were trained there had a fairly good standing on Dominaria. But even if she wasn’t the only one, she was one of the rare eagles amongst omnipresent owls. That difference was quickly set aside by her friends and her, but became apparent once again when she started rejecting the magic that was taught in that illustrious school. She was capable of casting the spells she was taught, but she didn’t feel drawn in any way to them, or really understood how they worked. So she started to seek other types of magic, and finally found some books on silence magic. This magic quickly became her own, and she mastered it better than any other student of that particular school—not a very high bar. Acting before the spell was even cast, and not reacting to it, the magic of acting beforehand. Stopping somebody from forming the words of powers, of shaping their spell. Countermagic set aside, silence spells are also very useful to read a book alone. I’ll not speak too much on the subject, but as soon as she graduated, she went to say goodbye to her parents, and started to seek out people and places with more informations on this kind of magic. Her journey took her out of Otaria, through Jamuraa, Shiv, Terisiare. She even stayed on Tolaria for a while. Travelling alone was dangerous, but the young aven, flying on her wings, armed with her magic and talons, avoided most problems and took care of the others.”
The narrator had stopped talking temporarily to drink in the cup the family patriarch gave her, using a small tube. The children in front of her that were listening to her story took advantage of that pause to ask their questions, these and more.
“Did she fly between the continents? Like migratory birds?
“Can you use silence magic to avoid being chided?”
After that last question, the mother of the family, who was writing behind the children, frowned a little, but her smile was playful. The storyteller answered the questions, looking to the asking children in turn, before resuming her story.
"Yes, it is on Dominaria, she saw some dragons from afar in Shiv and in other places, but she didn’t really want to open a conversation with them. She would meet more dragons in another time and place, but that story I’ll keep for another time. No, aven are too heavy for flights between continents, especially alone. Loneliness being the worst enemy during travels, she crossed seas and oceans in boats. And I don’t think your mother chides you often without a reason. Am I wrong?" A look confirmed her assumption, and after a few laughs, the subject was closed.
"During her travels, she was the object of curiosity. On Dominaria, outside of Otaria, there were few aven. But Dominaria is a big world, and if she was sometimes rejected by ignorance, most places accepted her as a traveller. In these places, she deepened her knowledge of magic and its nature. Of the differences between casting and spellshaping, and of the differences between the mana types. She learned with individuals, communities and even some schools, teaching a little of what she had picked up. She became capable of stopping any magic around her, current or future, she became one of the mages who mastered the Interdiction.”
“While she was visiting the world, she also discovered other things. She saw wonders and horrors both on these foreign continents. Remains and ruins from wars of past millenias, some dangerous even then. Battlefields now covered in great forests. She read the old stories of the Brothers’ War, accounts of spells cast on the whole world. Otaria had seen its share of death and disasters, but apparently nothing on the scale of the things that scoured the rest of Dominaria at irregular intervals. After one too many discoveries, she ended herr travels by returning home, to Otaria."
“First, she returned to the Balshan Bay that saw her birth and tried to teach her magic there for a time. But teaching never really interested her and she soon flown back to the skies of Otaria. She soon found a way to employ her talents while sating her hunger for travel. She became a messenger and a diplomat, for no single Cabal or tribe in particular. Her magic and wings allowed her to deliver messages and avoid most troubles. The magic of silence has a sister, the magic of sound, and she could even carry voices and speeches as they were entrusted to her. After some time, she was sometimes even invited to the meetings where treaties were negotiated and signed, to ensure that no magic would trouble the decision of the parties. She became the Silent Messenger.”
“Soon enough, she was trusted enough to suggest some modification of a treaty, or to highlight an issue that wouldn’t have been considered by those who asked for her help, while trying to be fair to all.”
“She stayed in that role for years, until somebody came that changed her life. During a meeting—more heated than usual—between emissaries from the Cabal and the Cephalid Empire, a human appeared. She had the feeling she had already seen his face somewhere, but his first words told her immediately. He announced himself as Urza Planeswalker.”
The name had the expected effect. The listeners knew that name, the name of the hero or monster of half of the stories the child heard. That name, and the fact that she stopped talking sparked new questions, but one was repeated multiple times: "Why was Urza on Otaria?”
“Urza came to do what the Messenger had been doing for years: deliver a message. Except he came with his own message. A warning and a call to unity. The warning was about an invasion, one that would consume the entire world. Carried out by monsters he had been preparing to fight for centuries, millennia even. Monsters so horrible that Dominaria as a whole would have to unite to have even a hope of defeating them. Friends and foes, together with a staggering number of strangers. Urza showed through illusions and artifice the first wave of the invaders’ war machines he had fought. Metallic machines invading the skies, delivering troops, or destroying cities. He left quickly after that, asking for an answer as soon as possible, saying that, for once, Otaria wouldn’t be able to stand on the side, that this war would set the entire world aflame.”
“Our hero, like you, had heard stories and read accounts on Urza’s past. On the wars that this man waged. On the horrors that would probably engulf Otaria if he brought his war to it with him. Over the next week, she flew tirelessly and contacted in her own name all the factions she had ever helped, delivered a message for, or negotiated with. A plan had started to crystallize in the young aven’s mind. Flying machines and invaders from another world would use magic for their movements and in their weapons. With enough other mages, she could theoretically isolate Otaria of this magic, preventing the invaders from accessing the whole continent.”
“But, of course, the factions, even the rare ones that agreed with her idea, didn’t want to part with a good number of their mages without any insurance that others would do the same. As a good portion rejected her offer as soon as she explained herself, her plan got next to no support. The leaders didn’t know anything about the horrors that happened outside Otaria, and that would probably come soon. Most of them had limited contacts with the rest of the world, if any, and they were strictly commercial. Even those that believed Urza’s warning thought about it as another war like those they were used to.”
“The aven was desperate. Without any kind of protection, Otaria would probably be conquered by the invaders or destroyed in the fighting. The Invasion was near. Eagles having a good eyesight, she had seen machines like the ones Urza showed, small and slim, flying higher than she would ever go, probably scouts. More and more desperate, an Interdiction on a scale several orders of magnitude higher than she had ever casted started to form in her mind, while she was heading to the Daru plains, gathering all the mana she could on her flight. When she arrived at the heart of the plains, she started to prepare to cast the spell.”
After she said these words, the storyteller changed subjects
"Did you know that, at the time, Dominaria had two moons?"
The children’s curiosity had been piqued, and, with a movement of their head, showed their ignorance. The mother, having finished a scroll, was unrolling a bigger one, and had a knowing smile.
"One of them shined every night with the power of the mana that was stored in it. It was the Glimmer Moon, and contained the same kind of mana the Silent Messenger used for her magic. Most people didn’t know about that, but she learned it during her travels. It had another name, a more fitting one in that case, the Null Moon. At night, at the Null Moon’s zenith, she cast her spell, the Greater Interdiction, and linked it to the moon, becoming the spell’s Nexus herself.”
“Her enchantment was horrible. Alone, she wouldn’t have been able to create a barrier around Otaria to stop the invaders. Alone, she couldn’t afford to be picky. Her spell absorbed all magic in its area of effect, sending back to the leylines the magic it couldn’t use and growing with the one it could. Each time magic was absorbed, it was filtered through the aven at the heart of the spell. She felt more and more mana coursing through her as her spell extended through inhabited areas. More mana than should ever go through the body of a living being. Pain was the Nexus’ whole world, and the knowledge of what she was doing was adding to her anguish. Each spell she felt being silenced could have been a healing spell saving someone’s life, or a simple fire spell to cook. Soon, the sheer range of the spell became unbearable for the one that would be called the Sorcerers’ End, but her spell barely covered the Daru Plains, far from all of Otaria. The concentration of the mana of order around her was so intense that nothing moved anymore. In a circle of fifteen feet around her, entropy ceased, and all the blades of grass stood motionless in parallel. The spell was autonomous now: even if the Nexus’ body died, she wouldn’t realize it. She would feel pain until the spell finally dissipated, some centuries or millenia later. Every night, the spell balanced itself with the Null Moon, sending it its excess white mana, and, if necessary, draining some from it.”
“Such a spell isn’t a natural thing, and beings capable of creating and casting this spell without dying, even only on a city, are rare. She survived that long only thanks to the ‘breeding’ of her ancestors, that found fertile ground in her body and her mind. At this point, the Interdiction Nexus felt an unique and indescribable flow of mana being absorbed by her spell and transmitted to her. Her Interdiction moved forward for miles. Without her knowledge or will, her spell had just absorbed a Planeswalker Spark’s Ignition, transferred it to her, and then absorbed the mana of her first walk behind the air.”
“A Planeswalker, like Mom?" asked one of the children, taking advantage of the narrator’s drinking pause to ask another question, on a subject that was a secret kept from some of the most powerful beings of most worlds.
The person telling that story from another time smiled before answering.
"No, a Planeswalker of Old, like Urza was. Your aunt and me are of a new kind of Planeswalker, the kind of Planeswalkers that are born today. There are common points: both can ‘walk behind the air’ as you say, but the Planeswalkers of Old weren’t beings of flesh and blood, and lived for thousands of years. They were so powerful and had so little in common with most people that those people’s lives didn’t even matter to them.”
“What happened to these Planeswalkers?”
“They were so powerful and ruthless that the world punished them and made them disappear decades ago." She resumed her tale.
"With that transformation into a Planeswalker, her mind expanded and the pain disappeared. She didn’t know what happened to her yet, and she would discover it with time, but the spell’s range grew and grew until it engulfed all of Otaria, both the continent and the underwater Cephalid empire around the land. All magic disappeared from Otaria that night, and should not come back before centuries, no magic being able to stop the Interdiction, that itself protected its Nexus by a field of Order, strengthening each night by the influence of the Glimmer Moon. Many Otarians died from the disappearance of magic, but also from those that rioted because of it, or even worse, from those who profited from it. The frozen aven in the middle of the plains was blamed and cursed by most, revered and adored by some. She gained new names: the Silent Sorceress, the Silent Goddess, the Sorcerer’s End, the One Law, the Plains’ Statue, the Magic Sunderer. The Cabal and its fights, the druids, the elves, the barbarians, the dwarves, the cephalids, the dragons, and all others had to live without magic. Deigned a monster, few among the people linked the Sorcerers’ End to the Silent Messenger, especially because most of the common people had never known her.”
“The invading army came and crashed one hundred meters inside the Interdiction’s border, in the ocean, drained of all magic. So much mana came to the Sorceress that day that she was unable to send all of it back to the leylines, and a part of it stayed with her since then. The only ones that saw anything were the cephalids who salvaged some of the ships and killed the few survivors.”
“Later, the Invaders tried something else, to fuse the continent with a continent from their world. The Interdiction wasn’t able to absorb a continent coming from an impossible direction. Without knowing exactly how, using the mana generated by the clash of the worlds, the Magic Sunderer moved the continent in another impossible direction. Once again, this had consequences, but her actions were mostly invisible, the rare effect on the world being considered a natural disaster.”
“Life went on, without magic. The schools started to teach new things and some knowledge was lost. Most references to the Sorceress or her magic were destroyed. Publicly, she was blamed for most of ill and new taxes that appeared on Otaria at this period.”
“There was another attack or two on the border of the spell, but things were mostly calm now. Then, someday, after months or years—time didn’t really have a meaning for the Interdiction’s Nexus—the Null Moon was destroyed, and all its mana vanished. As nobody really tried to cast spells on Otaria anymore, the Interdiction lost its nocturnal charge, and shrank over a few days until it only covered the plains, then only the Sorceress, and finally dissipated. Despite what the Nexus felt like, The Interdiction had in truth only lasted for some months. When its last remains returned to her, the aven’s new nature was thrust upon her. What her spell had delayed for so long finally took place, and she walked behind the air for the first time. For her worshippers, in the plain, the Statue awoke, fell to the ground before disappearing in clouds of white light. Time passing, she was forgotten, the year of the Interdiction nothing more than a legend told by parents, then grandparents, to children. Finally, the only thing left was a statue of an unnamed aven that took her place in the plains, carved by those who revered that still form. Otaria escaped death and invasion, and the Sorceress arrived in a world where she was able to shake off the names she was given on Otaria, being oblivious to most of them, and took back the name her parents had given her. Icalia.”
“But, that’s you!" burst out a child, proud of his deduction.
"Yes it was me, long ago.”
“But this story isn’t true, is it?" asked another.
"All stories are true while they’re being told.”
“What happened to you after that?" blurted the first one.
"That’s all you’ll get tonight, but maybe someday you’ll be able to convince me to continue this story."
Some asks and answers flied around for a bit before calm was restored by the father, who took the children away while the mother was washing her writing tools. Icalia watched through the window, admiring the clouds above and under her, reminding her of the freedom of flying, without having to take off, the very last remaining lights of the day giving a truly breathtaking view between the clouds. Tamiyo rolled up the scroll and stood up, ostensibly watching the iron-bound scrolls that never left the room she was in. Icalia answered the silent question.
"No need, I’ll not add to your charge. Besides, in today’s worlds it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful. Be careful, if you use it one day, to not become its prisoner as I did.”
“Very well." They started to walk in the hallway to their respective rooms. "I should inform you that there is a new group of Planeswalkers going around.
“There is?" The question was asked with a manifest interest. Groups often generated important events, and good customers too.
"They call themselves the Gatewatch, and say they want to protect the Multiverse from extraplanar threats. They took care of the Eldrazi fairly… crudely. I don’t know if you know what they are or of their freeing on Zendikar?"
The aven, if she could still be called that, nodded. Obviously.
"The last of the titans manipulated me and forced me to use this," Tamiyo continued in a cold, analytic voice, touching one of the three iron-bound scrolls. Icalia frowned at that while Tamiyo resumed: "but not without having modified it to help seal herself in Innistrad’s moon”
“Modified? Emrakul wanted to be imprisoned? Is Innistrad still in good shape?
“’Good shape’ is vague for Innistrad, but globally yes, it’s still inhabited. And yes to the other questions as well.”
“Interesting. This is well worth the story I gave you tonight. The children are a good audience, and these old stories need to be told." Arriving before the door of the guest room Tamiyo prepared for her, she put her hand on the door.
"Good night to you, Tamiyo.”
“And good night to you, Icalia."
“The Silent Sorceress” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.
