Alara Unbroken

by Doug Beyer

  He turned away and scanned the landscape.

  Jund’s sky was a cauldron of roiling smoke fed by a thousand volcanic chimneys. A storm was brewing nearby, a purplish welt on the sky that gathered force as it twisted.

  “We should get moving soon,” said Sarkhan. “This will be a bad place to be in a short while.” Rakka just grinned at him.

  The storm exploded suddenly, soundlessly, as if some magnetic cyst inside it had burst open. A black shape appeared from inside it, fell meteorically for a moment, then caught its own weight in the air. It had wings.

  “This is our dragon?” Sarkhan asked.

  “That’s him, yes,” said Rakka.

  “He’s big. A hellkite.”

  “Not exactly. Hellkite is too young a term to describe him.”

  “He’s older than a hellkite?”

  “He’s older than the word hellkite.” Sarkhan’s eyebrows raised.

  Rakka set herself in a firm stance, and began pulling at the air with her clawlike hands. She grasped pockets of air and pulled them to her chest, fuelling some kind of ritual. Soon, Sarkhan saw, she had a ball of hot smoke hovering before her. With a shout she pushed the smoke-ball into the air, and it shot upward with a roar. High up in the air above the mountaintop, the ball of smoke detonated, sending streams of fire in all directions. As the fire dissipated, it left cinder streaks in the sky above them.

  The goblins cheered. The dragon neared.

  NAYA

  It had taken days for Ajani to recover his bearings and travel back to his pride’s valley. It was dawn as he approached, and he moved as carefully and as silently as possible. He stepped on stones when he could, bare dirt when he couldn’t, and only on foliage as a last resort. As far as he was concerned, the pride was a nest of enemies—he didn’t want to give away his return if he could help it.

  The den was silent, nearly deserted in the early morning. He smelled burnt wood—had they lit another bonfire? What were they doing, feasting after Jazal’s death?

  No. It was a funeral pyre. Jazal’s funeral. They had cremated his brother without him.

  Ajani approached the pyre. Almost nothing recognizable was left of Jazal; every hair and claw was incinerated.

  “I don’t look good, do I?” said Jazal’s voice.

  “No, you don’t, brother,” said Ajani. “They should have done rites to calm you after death. They burned you as a kha, but they should have burned you as an unavenged spirit.”

  “I’m a spirit, then, am I?”

  “If you’re not, I’m going crazy.”

  “Well, yes, that is what I’d be implying.”

  Ajani ignored that. The ash was still warm to the touch. He cupped his hands and grabbed great handfuls of the ash, and wiped streaks of it down his chest. It was Jazal, he thought. Those were flecks of his actual burned body. The image he had of his brother in his mind—the strong nacatl with the knowing smile—had no basis in reality anymore. Jazal wasn’t on a trip somewhere, off in the jungle, about to arrive back home to him again at any moment. That was it. Those streaks of ash were his brother.

  There was an object in the pit, something dark and round, made of a strange material. Ajani reached to pick it up, but a voice that stopped him—one outside his own head.

  “Ajani, what are you doing?”

  He whirled around. Zaliki stood there, her face elongated with shock.

  “Are those Jazal’s …?”

  “Zaliki, I—”

  “Ajani, I don’t know where you’ve been the last few days. And I know you’ve been through a lot. It’s something horrible that I can scarcely imagine. But look at yourself. There are children around here. Think of the example you’re setting. Touching the ashes of the dead?”

  “I know. I know it’s … wrong. But look, Zaliki, I’m going through something. Jazal’s … presence. It’s with me. Maybe you feel it too.”

  “No. Get away from me with those hands!”

  “Okay, don’t worry. I’ll clean all this up. Just don’t go,” said Ajani. “I could use someone to talk to.”

  Zaliki turned her head, as if looking for an escape route. But she stayed. “All right,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Ajani.

  Ajani’s eyes drifted back to the pyre, and the object he saw there. He couldn’t help himself—he reached into the ash and pulled it out. It was in the shape of a hemisphere: a bowl. It was filthy; every surface was coated in fine gray dust.

  “Ajani, please—”

  Ajani turned the bowl over in his hands. The ash fell from it as he turned it, revealing a dull, dark, hard material underneath. He wiped the grime away, and the surface shone a glittering black. His gold-white paw looked bluish and distended in the curve of the bowl.

  “Wh—what is that thing?” asked Zaliki.

  As he wiped more ash away from the bowl, he noticed the traceries of interlocking shapes. They were scales. He had seen scales like them before. They weren’t like the hides of gargantuans. They weren’t like the smooth silver of trout in the streams.

  They were dragon scales.

  “I don’t know,” said Ajani. “It’s a bowl of some kind, but to hold what I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a talisman, an artifact. It might be connected to the creatures that emerged that night.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. The way it shines, I guess. What’s it made of?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he muttered. “Something that doesn’t burn in fire,” he said out loud.

  All the dragons he had seen on Jund were bright red. He wondered why the scales of the bowl were black. The object radiated a foulness that Ajani found disconcerting—it seemed steeped in death. He wondered if Zaliki, a shaman, could feel the same sensation, or whether it was too otherworldly for her.

  “This thing feels … strange. Do you feel it?”

  Zaliki’s eyes were blank, uncomprehending. “No. What do you mean?” she asked.

  She wasn’t feeling it, which was a relief. He didn’t want her to know of his terrifying experiences on the volcanic world. Or maybe he should tell her everything: Jund, the dragons, Sarkhan, being a planeswalker. “I don’t know,” he said. “Never mind. The scales are just … strange.”

  “Ajani, I know this experience has been terrible for you. But I hope that one day, you feel like you can move on.”

  Ajani just wiped a streak of ash off the bowl. He looked into it and saw his own face, tinged with indigo, stretched across its surface. To find its source, he decided, he would have to travel back to Jund.

  “I’ll be able to move on when I know the truth,” he said. “I won’t rest until I know it, and bring justice to the one who caused all this.”

  “Well, I’m trying to move on, Ajani. I’m trying to live my life, and you should endeavor to do the same. Leave him be.”

  “He needs to be avenged, Zaliki.”

  “He doesn’t need anything. He’s gone, all right? He’s gone.”

  “I know. But his spirit—”

  “His spirit probably just wants you to forget about the whole thing. Jazal loved the pride more than anything, Ajani. Maybe his spirit would just want you to take his place as kha, did you ever think of that? We could use you around here. Think of your responsibilities.”

  Ajani suppressed a low, guttural growl.

  “Clean yourself up, Ajani. I—I can’t be around you right now.”

  She left him alone by the fire pit. As he handled the dragonscale bowl, flakes of ash spun in circles around his face.

  Was she right? Should he move on? Jazal was just a smear. Maybe he should just leave it be. He should be using the time to help the pride heal, to prevent Jazal’s work from splintering apart. Maybe dwelling on his death was just obsessive.

  He moved a piece of burnt leather armor in the fire pit—again, he couldn’t help himself. His fingers were stained black. It was as if the pride had brought
a pottery relic into the center of the village, and smashed it to the ground right in the open square, leaving the pieces where they lay.

  “I know who killed you, Jazal,” he said. “Do you now?” said Jazal’s voice. “He’s always wanted to be kha. And he’s always hated me.”

  “This is how you’re going to serve my memory?” “You’ll never rest otherwise,” said Ajani. “So neither can I.”

  What remained of Jazal’s body lay right there before him in the fire pit, gray and crumbly. He couldn’t let his brother remain like that. He looked side to side, and reached into the fire pit once again, with both hands. He smudged his arms and legs with the ashes, and dribbled them over his mane. Then he sank into the shadows of the forest to find Tenoch.

  JUND

  The dragon’s silhouette broadened into a black shadow against the tumultuous scarlet cauldron of Jund’s sky. The goblins chittered and scratched themselves excitedly. Sarkhan realized that they weren’t just itching, but rather they were piercing their own skin with their claws.

  “What are they doing?” asked Sarkhan.

  “They’re preparing themselves,” said Rakka. “Goblins consider it an honor to be devoured by almighty dragons, the greatest predators in the world. The scent of the goblin blood drives dragons into a frenzy. Watch.”

  The dragon’s wings blotted out the sky in great sweeps, blasting the mountaintop with gales of grit as he landed. He was immense, longer than any hellkite Sarkhan had ever seen. His scales were lustrous black, but didn’t behave the way he expected such a shine would; they reflected light in odd, distorted colors. The light of Jund’s sky swam across the beast’s body as a greenish gold oil slick instead of the smoky reds it should have. The creature’s feet touched down gently and precisely, a curiously fastidious gesture against the windstorm his wings had whipped up around them. His movements seemed surreal, as if the boundaries of his body cut holes in reality through which he passed. Every motion of his neck or twitch of his wings seemed to take eons to pass through space, and yet the dragon was moving as normally as the goblins or the shamans.

  Sarkhan came to a realization: Rakka’s master, whether the elementalist knew it or not, was no mere dragon. He was a planeswalker, and an immensely powerful one. Sarkhan was gripped by a strange idea, and felt awe in it despite its absurdity: whereas Sarkhan had walked the planes for years, the being, the dragon planeswalker, always remained perfectly still, and traveled the planes by moving the multiverse around himself.

  The dragon folded his wings behind him and sat up, tenting his fingertips as he regarded the humanoids. He was strikingly regal.

  “Sarkhan Vol, may I present my master, Nicol Bolas,” said Rakka.

  “It is a profound honor,” said Sarkhan. He found himself bowing, pressing the knuckles of his fists together under his chin, as his people did in the world of his home.

  Bolas grinned, his lips dragging away to reveal too many teeth. “It is I who am honored,” he said.

  At the dragon’s voice, the goblins cheered and clawed themselves.

  His eyes turned to Rakka. “The deed is done?” he asked.

  She nodded. “It is. Sarkhan was of great help in freeing the obelisk. His magic is broad and powerful.”

  Bolas flexed the spikes on his cheeks. “Is that so. Well, then.” He looked over Sarkhan, his neck arching like a question mark.

  Sarkhan took great pride in the dragon’s stare, the study of a predator sizing up prey. He knew a dragon of Bolas’s age would not bother with trivial game; he was a fair match. Could the dragon finally be one worth his reverence?

  “You may go,” said Bolas to Rakka.

  She nodded, then turned and headed back down the hill without another word.

  The goblins were beside themselves with excitement, dancing around Bolas in a circle, chittering and peeping, clawing themselves and each other in a frenzy. Bolas looked down on them for the first time.

  Sarkhan held his breath. Finally, he would see the ancient dragon unleash his fury on the suicidal goblins.

  Bolas took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, but with his mouth unexpectedly closed. His nostrils flared with the long, slow breath. He looked each goblin in the eyes one at a time, his head turning around the circle.

  Where was the rage? Where was the ecstatic tumult of destruction? Where was the blast of fiery breath, like Sarkhan had so often seen across Jund? Was the dragon really not going to feast?

  Then, one by one, the goblins wheezed a final sigh, and slumped over onto the bare rock. They toppled like stacked dominoes with no apparent cause—if Bolas had used magic on them, it was as effortless as an eyeblink. The goblins twitched, then lay still.

  A smile bloomed across Bolas’s lips. Sarkhan felt a bead of sweat travel down his back—which wasn’t that strange, given the volcanic miasma around them. Bolas didn’t devour the bodies, but instead seemed to appreciate the shape of them, around him in a circle. A few of them had pink tongues lolling out of their soricine mouths.

  The dragon turned his eyes back to Sarkhan, and Sarkhan felt the weight of the stare like two swords pressed to his chest. The creature was the apex of dragonkind, he realized. He had come to Jund, a world full of dragons, only to meet his ideal dragon from far beyond the world. He had come to Jund to seek the worthiest specimen of life he could find, and found it in an avatar of death.

  “Rakka tells me you’re a shaman and a warrior,” said Bolas. “I am.”

  “But not one from this world.”

  “Is it that plain?”

  “Your scent doesn’t match Jund’s. And your spark is … apparent to me.” The comment was innocent enough, but Sarkhan got the impression that Bolas had just called his soul “delectable.”

  “I came here to seek a worthy dragon. I believe I have found him.”

  “Good. Then I have a mission for you, planeswalker,” said Bolas.

  Ever since he had watched his warriors die in a gout of dragonfire, Sarkhan had wished for a dragon that lived up to his capacity for honor. He hadn’t expected that he would hear the realization of his wish in the form of words, spoken by a dragon as if by a man, but folded and hissed using a tongue normally used to lick flame. But those words were exactly what he had lived to hear.

  “There’s a war on,” said Bolas. “I need every planeswalker I can get, to ensure my victory.”

  “I’m your weapon,” said Sarkhan.

  Bolas pointed a finger, then used that claw to slash a line in his opposite palm. He reached down and presented the bloody hand to Sarkhan.

  The gesture moved Sarkhan. He pulled a curving knife from his belt, and slashed his own palm.

  The wounds touched each other; Sarkhan’s hand was tiny against the dragon’s huge claw. Sarkhan’s human heart pumped rapidly, and the dragon’s much slower. But their lives mingled in a flow of crimson.

  “I know of another planeswalker,” said Sarkhan.

  NAYA

  You,” said Ajani. He had walked all the way out to the cliffs, the piece of land that jutted over Hydra’s Tail Chasm. Tenoch sat there, his back to Ajani, facing out over the cliffside. It was a common place for members of Ajani’s pride to come and reflect.

  Tenoch didn’t turn around. “So you’re back. I didn’t think you’d show your face around here again.” “You did this. Admit it.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  Ajani’s eyes narrowed. He snarled at Tenoch’s back. “You’ve always envied Jazal, and you’ve always hated me. You waited until you had the night watch, and you assassinated my brother!”

  Tenoch turned and stood. He cocked an eyebrow at Ajani’s appearance, covered in the ashes of Jazal’s funeral pyre, but made no mention of it. “How could I have killed him? The creatures that attacked the den were summoned by magic, dark magic. That’s nothing I could muster, and you know it.”

  “Maybe not. But I know you’re behind it somehow. You’re the one who stands to gain the most from Jazal’s
death, and now, right before the meeting of the council, here you are with an open seat waiting for you. Confess, and I … I won’t—”

  Tenoch’s eyebrows did a sarcastic little dance. “You won’t what? Oh, White-Fur, for shame! You’re no murderer. This is no territory for you, this little mission of revenge! I’m sorry for the kha’s death, I truly am. And I’m as shocked as you are that this all happened. It’s rattled the pride down to its core, and the oldsters are wondering whether it’s even worth it to stay here. Even if I do become kha, it’ll be chaos for me to try to calm everybody down, to convince everyone to remain here in the valley … ”

  “Stop evading.”

  Tenoch scowled. “What I stand to gain from this situation is none of your concern—you’re not brother to the kha anymore, so it’s the business of the elders now. Go back to your den. Polish your warrior trophies, if you have any. And say, if you really want to concern yourself with my appointment as kha, you may want to impress me—I might just make you my chief adviser. You could sit at my side, rather than getting chased about in the woods by superstitious humans.”

  Ajani snarled, and Tenoch backed up instinctively. His back foot came perilously close to the cliff’s edge, and pushed a few pebbles over the edge. Tenoch glanced down at them; the pebbles fell for a long moment, bouncing occasionally off rocky outcroppings before disappearing into the depths of the chasm.

  “You’ll never be kha of this pride,” said Ajani.

  “Be smart about this, Ajani. I’m offering you a place among us. You can benefit from this. Or you can choose to be obstinate, and you can watch your life of relative privilege, considering your—condition—come to an end.”

  Ajani’s claws were deep in Tenoch’s tunic in an instant, lifting him up at arm’s length. Tenoch’s feet dangled over the cliff’s edge.