Planar Chaos

by Timothy Sanders

  The gladehunter mark did not stand out from the rest of his face, but Venser still felt it there. It didn’t burn or seethe or throb, and it wasn’t raised like a wart or mole, but its presence was still undeniable as a fresh wound.

  He had lived most of his life expecting to be caught and punished for the work he did, but the feeling was far more acute now. Windgrace had given him the chance to atone, and he had used it to sin against the panther-god once more. He had attacked Windgrace’s soldiers, stolen the machine, used it, and now he was preparing to use it again to escape his duty to his homeland. He wondered if he would truly make it out of Urborg before Windgrace came for him. He wondered if he’d ever be allowed to return.

  A soft buzzing sound and a blinking light came from the right armrest control. Jodah’s signal had come. Venser sat up and extended his hands, lightly flicking switches and turning dials. The signal was strong and Venser easily isolated it. From there it was a simple matter to calibrate the chair’s guidance mechanisms on this new destination.

  As he did so Venser smiled slightly. Now he had three places he could travel to: Urborg, Shiv, and Skyshroud. Each had been converted into energy patterns the machine could re-create on command, their unique coordinates laid out in specific relation to each other. With each trip the machine added more magical-spatial data to its matrix. Venser quickly calculated figures as he worked. If he had a week to do nothing but jaunt around Dominaria, he could map the entire globe and thereafter go anywhere he liked at any time.

  Jodah’s signal stopped, yanking Venser out of his private thoughts. He moaned softly, only half aware he had made the sound. His fingers flew faster over the controls, but the machine only confirmed his initial fears.

  He wasn’t finished. The machine was still several seconds away from recording all of the signal data, and without complete information Venser could not reliably go to Skyshroud. He might wind up alongside Jodah and Jhoira, but he just as easily might land in the middle of the ocean or on top of an erupting volcano. His hands continued to dance, confirming and reconfirming what he already knew.

  He had to do something. He couldn’t just sit here waiting for Windgrace or the gladehunters to track him down. If he tried to reach Skyshroud now, there was no telling where he’d end up. If he didn’t try now, he would lose the best chance he had of reaching Jhoira before some new catastrophe happened.

  Rest now. Don’t try. Stay and rest awhile….

  The Weaver King’s voice was a snake’s whisper, low and sinuous. Venser felt all the things he always felt, the panic from recognizing another’s voice in his thoughts, the fear from wondering what secrets had already been betrayed. He also felt the powerful dread of the Weaver King himself and the shame of allowing Windgrace’s enemy in without offering the least bit of resistance.

  This time Venser also felt anger. Fear and dread shriveled like paper in fire as Venser’s outrage swelled. The Weaver King had erred in pushing him at this particular moment, for Venser had reached his limit. There were too many people making too many demands on him. Planeswalkers and archmages aside, Venser’s own sense of duty and the guilt from shirking that duty were more than enough to spur him to action. The Weaver King’s exhortations appealed to his weakness, that childish desire that told him to hide his head and wait for the danger to pass. It was a compelling notion no matter how irrational, but Venser would no longer be compelled. Windgrace would never succumb to such a ploy, nor Jodah, nor Radha, and Jhoira least of all.

  Venser gritted his teeth and stabbed his fingers in deliberate, measured motion. The ambulator whirred to life under his fingers. A film of yellow energy crawled up the dais and over the arms of the chair, slowly covering Venser in a gleaming skin of crackling light.

  Stay. Do not leave. I forbid it. Rest….

  “I will not rest,” Venser said, “until my work is done.” Resolute and full of purpose, Venser flipped the last switch. The ambulator shuddered and faded into a curtain of golden yellow sparks.

  The marsh was quiet for a moment or two. Then a high, manic giggle broke the silence and the Weaver King said, Well, I guess you showed me.

  Confusion and fatigue momentarily overwhelmed Venser, so it took him several seconds to recognize that the ambulator had stopped midjourney. It took several more to realize where he was.

  He recognized the Blind Eternities from his previous planes-walks with Teferi and Windgrace, but then he had been a passenger, protected. Now he was alone, and his ambulator floated aimlessly through the colorful void, pitching and rolling like a cork on a lazy river. There was no sense of motion, however, none of the stress that would normally accompany an end-over-end tumble through empty space.

  The irrational calm and stability he felt began to worry him. This was unlike any other ambulator trip he had taken before. Of course, he had to acknowledge that every ambulator trip he had taken so far had been unique and unpredictable, but this one still troubled him. It felt different. It was deeper, stronger, and far more profound than a simple hop across the ocean.

  The ambulator was meant to carry him through space without resistance, but this time he felt the multiverse pulling at him, drawing him along like a submerged riptide. This trip wasn’t a simple matter of disappearing from point A and effortlessly reappearing in point B. It was more like closing his eyes and struggling up a steep hill against a strong, driving rain. Each incremental advance was a struggle that required sustained effort from him.

  Was this the result of a half-completed trip on the ambulator? Or was it more proof that he himself was the variable, the supposed powers he had yet to manifest somehow affecting the machine’s proper function?

  He tentatively ran his hands over the controls, confirming that the ambulator was still responsive. Perhaps this was not as dire a trial as it seemed. He could return to Urborg if he chose. He would not, of course, as he was unwilling to give the Weaver King or Windgrace another chance to bring him to heel, but he was not trapped here.

  Venser looked out into the abyss, across the vast expanse of potential matter and newborn energy. His strength and focus began to return and he struggled to relax and clear his mind. At least the environment here wasn’t toxic, or even worse, hostile. It was desolate, but also beautiful in its fashion.

  The more he looked, the more he saw. This was not a trick of the eye or a flight of fancy. Details about the void came into sharper view when he concentrated on them. Recognizable shapes emerged from the chaos as they did from clouds beheld by a child. There was a globe of fire, a sphere-shaped world dense with red and orange flames. There was a city as big as a moon, every inch of its surface covered in towering architecture through which streamed multitudes of humans and monsters. There was a world that mirrored itself, its shape formed by two symmetrical parts that fitted together to form a perfect circle. And there was a world of silver and black metal, a vast and complicated crucible of alloy and oil.

  This last sphere lingered before Venser, the ambulator’s glittering lights reflecting back off the plane’s metallic surface. The chair drifted toward it, perhaps responding to Venser’s desire to see it more closely. He had created a metal world of his own in a sense, a small one that was as expansive as his imagination but bounded by his workshop’s walls. Whomever had created the larger clockwork world had resources and vision far beyond Venser’s.

  Something flashed on the metal plane’s outer edge. The ambulator righted itself so that Venser could see the new development clearly, but even as he squinted through the brackish void a strange figure materialized in front of him. It was man-shaped, square and massive, and it gleamed like silver in the sun. He actually seemed to be made of silver, or some magical silver metal that flexed and breathed like a rhino’s hide. The metal man had broad shoulders, and his round head sat nestled inside a high collar that rose up to his ears and covered the back of his skull. His torso was plated, and he had a majestic golden symbol inscribed across his chest.

  “Oh,” the silver man said. H
is voice was slow and deliberate, and he spoke with the gravity of a serious, learned man. “Now it starts to make sense.”

  Fearful for reasons he would never identify, Venser raised a trembling hand and said, “Hello.”

  The silver man stared with wide, soulful eyes. He extended a four-fingered hand toward Venser in the ambulator and said, “Interesting. You don’t need that, do you?”

  Unnerved, Venser felt his hands stiffen on the controls. The silver man’s tranquil interest was disturbingly familiar. He had endured similar appraisals by Nicol Bolas, Windgrace, and Teferi, and now Venser prepared to encounter yet another planeswalker. He remained outwardly still and agape as he surreptitiously prepared the ambulator in case he needed to escape. “What do you mean?”

  The silver man paused, distracted by a sound behind him that Venser did not hear. He let his eyes drift from the top of the ambulator to its dais floor. He raised his hand in an unfamiliar gesture and said, “I would speak with you at length. And soon. But I must excuse myself for the moment.”

  Venser watched the silver statue fade. The strange apparition stared as he went, his heavy features uncannily expressive, and he regarded Venser with a complex blend of guarded curiosity, genuine concern, and profound sadness.

  The silver man’s body rippled before it completely vanished, creating a visual distortion that clouded Venser’s eyes. He blinked them clear and saw that the silver man was growing more solid. His appearance was practically unchanged, but Venser noticed a slight decrease in his bulky body’s size—the silver man had become leaner and more flexible, his movements a shade more lively. The shine from his body struck long, silver lines in the void around him that stretched ever outward like the first rays of sunlight across the morning sky.

  “Upon deeper consideration,” the man said, “I could never let you proceed, burdened as you are. It will only make it more difficult for us to meet again.” He floated in close with his arms crossed. He nodded respectfully and reached out with his thumb and index finger.

  Venser wanted to speak, but his tongue felt like stone. He only managed to blink and sweat slightly as the silver man brushed his fingers across the artificer’s cheek.

  “You really don’t need this,” he said. His voice seemed higher-pitched, more excited. The man lightly moved his index finger across Venser’s face back and forth until he found some sort of purchase.

  “You are a remarkable young man,” he said. “You shouldn’t go tagged like the family pet.”

  Through his paralysis Venser felt something sticky separate from his face. He stared at the silver man’s oddly intense expression as the stranger peeled off Venser’s gladehunter mark like the skin from a grape. The silver man held the green symbol in front of Venser and closed it in his broad fist.

  “You have so much to offer,” he told Venser. “So much unrealized potential. So many great things yet undone. When next we meet, you and I will get to know each other much, much better.” The silver man winked and smiled, then he flickered out of sight.

  For several moments Venser could only sit and stare out into the void. The strange worlds he had glimpsed before were gone, the planes of fire and metal and city lost in the endless clouds of empty space and dust.

  The mark was gone. Venser reached up and rubbed the empty spot on his cheek. He no longer felt Windgrace’s hold on him. The cold fog of the panther-god’s displeasure had lifted and Venser savored a moment of buoyant relief. Was quitting Lord Windgrace’s service truly this easy? Was the gladehunter mark something to be shucked and discarded like corn silk?

  The artificer forced his leaden limbs to move. He still had a job to do. All he needed was to employ the tools he’d brought along to help him do it.

  Venser’s hopes for a reliable ambulator were shrinking fast after this last misstep. The machine functioned, its mechanisms operating perfectly. He could see the strength and quality of the design and craft. There were no flaws or errors that could account for the troubles he had, but the fact remained: Except for the short skip across Urborg with Jodah, the machine had gone disastrously wrong every time he used it. The chair had separated him from Jhoira due to causes unknown and beyond his control, and now he was stalled in the Blind Extremities.

  Then Venser remembered Skyshroud, and his paralysis broke. Jhoira needed his help there. Jodah was waiting there. If the box hadn’t simply malfunctioned, the sudden interruption of the archmage’s signal could be dire news indeed for all of them.

  The ambulator spun, taking away the view of the void that had housed the metal plane. Venser’s fingers came alive on the control panels as he extrapolated the rest of his trip’s course. Jodah’s incomplete signal gave him direction but not distance, so he would have to go very slowly. He could still make it to Skyshroud if he was careful and reached the forest without overshooting it.

  Venser cleared his mind, shoving aside everything but his destination. Skyshroud was where he needed to be. Skyshroud was where he must go.

  The ambulator whirred and blinked. Venser felt heat, pressure, and a galvanic tingling all over his body as a sheen of yellow light enveloped the chair. Venser focused his thoughts, energy crackled around him, and the Blind Eternities were soon empty and uninhabited once more.

  * * *

  —

  Jodah scrambled out from under the exposed roots that framed his tunnel. Freyalise was waiting for him.

  “Hello,” he said. His fingers closed around the beacon box inside his sleeve, and he pressed down on it until he heard a click. “By your leave, I’ve come to talk with you.”

  The planeswalker waved angrily and bore Jodah up into the air. Pure force slammed into him from all directions, battering his body and forcing the air from his lungs. “You are not welcome here,” Freyalise said. From bitter experience, Jodah recognized both the cold, patrician tone and the dangerous mood that produced it.

  The pressure around him eased, leaving Jodah to float freely inside a faintly glittering, emerald cloud. Freyalise waved her arm again and sent him hurtling toward the wasted trees of Skyshroud. She pointed to this tree and that, and with each gesture Jodah followed her finger. He shouted and cursed as she dashed him from trunk to trunk, slamming him into the tough wood hard enough to bruise him without breaking him. The beacon box was crushed between his arm and his chest on the second impact, and he left a small cloud of metal bits in his wake.

  Freyalise beckoned, and Jodah’s limp body sailed toward the ground. She stopped him several feet in front of her and righted him with a contemptuous shrug, Through pain-slitted eyes Jodah saw Jhoira standing behind the planeswalker. The Ghitu’s body was rigid, her fine features pale with concern.

  He forced his swollen, blood-slick lips to form words. “Jhoira,” he said. “Brought help.”

  “Help?” Freyalise let out a half-snarled laugh.

  Jodah fought to stay conscious. “I have powerful friends,” he said. Experience had told him Freyalise responded best to brevity and respect. It had also told him she could be distracted, even rattled, by a seemingly defeated enemy’s bravado. She never seemed quite sure how to handle anything except a coward’s groveling or a valiant’s grudging respect.

  This time the planeswalker was not distracted. She said, “So you do. And I can imagine the sort, planeswalkers in name only. Which of these will come to your rescue, Archmage? Karn? Teferi? Jaya Ballard? Which of them still cares and is capable—the construct, burned-out academic, or the child-woman taskmage?”

  Jodah’s eyes snapped wide open. He coughed, spit a tooth to the side, and stared Freyalise full in the face. “Jaya’s gone,” he said quietly.

  The planeswalker faltered for a moment. “As you must also go,” she said. “Jhoira has agreed to perform a service for me. She is unavailable until she has completed it.”

  “Freyalise,” Jhoira said, “I have given you my promise, and I will see it through. Is there any purpose in killing Jodah now? More, is there any purpose in my witnessing his death?”<
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  Freyalise glanced back at the Ghitu. “His death, if I kill him, will not be on your conscience. Simply because he called out to you does not make him your responsibility.”

  “My responsibility is to find Radha,” Jhoira said. “Yours is to protect Skyshroud. Are either of those advanced by Jodah’s murder?”

  “Keep quiet,” Freyalise said. “This one will be of use to me or he will not be at all.” She turned to Jodah. “Your life is yours. You may keep it, Archmage, or you may throw it away. But it will be you who gives me a reason to spare you—or to slay you and be about my business.”

  Jodah nodded, maintaining as much of his dignity as he could. Struggling to move his sore arm through the thick, green cloud, the archmage reached inside his robe.

  “The cold is returning,” he told Freyalise. “What you and I dread most is happening: a new Ice Age begins. You know what will happen, what has to happen next. You know the scale of the World Spell you will inevitably cast. We both do.”

  Freyalise’s face flushed red. “Do not speak to me as an equal.”

  “To save Skyshroud you’ll have to destroy it,” Jodah said. “Unless you use this.” He pulled out a small hand mirror. The glass and the elegant silver handle had survived his rough journey without the slightest crack or scratch. The mirror gleamed brightly in the gloom, casting back more light than it received.

  “Is that the original?” Freyalise said. “Or a decoy?” She opened her hand, and the mirror sprang from Jodah’s grasp to hers.

  “It functions as it always has,” Jodah said. The mirror was his trump card, a powerful artifact that had been a crucial element in his previous dealings with Freyalise. It acted as both repository and filter for the highest forms of magic. Spells cast into it could be refracted back out with incredible precision and to more profound effect.