Alara Unbroken

by Doug Beyer

  Ajani didn’t know what to make of destiny, nor of history. He had heard the visions of prophets and the declarations of traditionalists, all of who claimed to know how the future would be shaped. He didn’t know whether they had claim to a piece of the truth or not. But he knew that nothing could assail what he saw before his eyes. Against all the theories that said otherwise, and against all the institutions founded on assumptions contradicted by those phenomena, stood the basic facts.

  Where once there were five worlds, there was one.

  JUND

  After Rakka had introduced Sarkhan to her draconic master, she returned to her mission of spreading her master’s war. She traveled the understory of Jund, seeking out other clans to spread her prophecy to. She stayed with the Ripclan Tol Durek clan for a few nights, and told them the story of the first Life Hunt, and told them that the Life Hunt tradition was soon to enter a new phase. She fed them exactly the lines that her master told her to feed them, and their minds devoured the words like starving whelps. She moved on to the Nel Toth clan, and they gorged themselves on her words as well. The words had a power to them, an almost-music that sounded to every listener like the echoes of long-bygone days of glory. Rakka didn’t have to embellish on the stories to make them ring clear and true; everywhere she went she met people unknowingly poised on the edge of conversion.

  When the tremors came, of course, ripping the edges of the world and merging with the other planes, it did help. As terrifying as the changes were to Rakka personally, they did serve to back up her story to powerful effect.

  Bolas had told her that there would be some sign of the next phase of his plans, and that she would know it when it came. She fretted a bit that she had never pressed him for more detail, but when the Eternal Crags trembled, broke, and fell into dust, exposing a shadowy, alien world beyond it, she had to admit that, as signs went, that one was impressively unambiguous.

  Days after the Crags fell, she walked among the rubble, looking to discover, finally, what her master might have wrought in the places beyond the boundaries of her world. The going was hard, but she summoned elementals to push through the debris, and carved a satisfactory path into the heart of where the mountains once were. The destruction ran in a rough line, hewn to an invisible boundary as far as the eye could see in either direction. She had reached it—where Jund ended, and some other world began. When she reached the junction point, she gasped. The volcanic sediment of her native Jund gave way to flats of a gray, hard-packed substance like clay, flecked with bits of … dead matter. Decomposing beings lurched and crawled across the landscape—but the stench was the first enemy to cross the border.

  It was Grixis, the purported home of her master. Somehow she had expected something a little more … regal. Whenever Bolas visited her, his presence overwhelmed her. The sensation of power positively dripped from him, the aura of a monarch who ruled a vast empire. But that place, his home, was a corpse. What would drive him to lair there? Surely, if Bolas was capable of traveling to Jund and presumably other places, he could retreat to someplace more fitting his personal magnitude.

  Still, the tang of black mana that clung to the dragon was also unmistakable in Grixis. As her own elemental magic thrived in the fiery cauldron of Jund, so must his flourish there. The dragon terrified and fascinated her when he came to her world; he must be a god there, she thought.

  NAYA

  Looking over the panorama of the world of Naya, Sarkhan shook his head dismissively. Naya had never experienced an attack by a dragon. It wasn’t as if massive creatures were foreign to it; the gargantuans native to Naya destroyed their share of its jungles just by walking around, garnering them reverence with almost every culture on the plane. But the footfalls of meandering gargantuans were not adequate preparation for an assault by a dragon.

  Jund’s dragons were specially adapted to dealing with difficult game. They survived on fast-moving goblins, human warriors with swords and scale-piercing spears, and the incredibly tough and stubborn viashino. The dragons had perfected a death-plunge maneuver that allowed them to scoop hordes of fleeing humanoids in a single gulp, becoming such experts at the maneuver that they could execute it while strafing any terrain from wide volcanic flats to jagged peaks—which is why most denizens of Jund huddled in the sheltered lowlands, away from their ravaging jaws.

  On Naya, the foliage was thick but eminently flammable. There were no jagged chasms between mountain peaks.

  As Jund and Naya overlapped one another, serrated peaks from Jund sliced through Naya’s understory and gushed lava into its glades. Meanwhile huge stands of trees and vine-covered step pyramids from Naya lanced up through Jund’s highlands. Any pockets of civilization that had once thrived in the intermingled areas were crushed immediately. The areas of overlap became dead zones, filled with ruins and corpses.

  Sarkhan had begun summoning his personal flight of dragons as soon as he mustered the mana for the spell. Maybe the dragons were a gift from a cold, calculating dragon planeswalker, but the fact remained that they were a flight of dragons under his control. If that was somehow a disgrace, Sarkhan had never enjoyed disgrace more.

  The first dragon he summoned for his army was the immense male hellkite, Karrthus. He was almost stately in his bearing, a crown of horns encircling his head and a single sharp spike curving downward from his chin. He thrashed about impatiently, as if he were already ready to lay waste to Naya all by himself.

  “I know how you feel,” Sarkhan said to the beast. “We’re weapons waiting to be unsheathed, you and I. I don’t know Bolas’s scheme, but at least he’s unafraid of putting us to good use. It’s been so long since I’ve been at war—I’m eager to test my edge in battle.”

  The dragon turned his head to the sky and bellowed, punctuating the roar with a blast of fire.

  Sarkhan reached out into Jund and into his other mana bonds for more mana. One by one, he summoned dragon after dragon, amassing a force large enough to raze a world.

  BANT

  What’s the meaning of this?” demanded Gwafa Hazid. “I’ve been detained for days.”

  “You’re coming out so that I can ask you some questions,” said Elspeth Tirel, unlocking his cell. “And you’re going to answer them. Come on.”

  Elspeth’s injuries had kept her from returning to the front lines immediately. But she had convinced the cleric to release her to Valeron, to see Hazid. She knew he could be a link to the worlds beyond Bant—and a key to the threats behind the war.

  “These proceedings are … are out of order,” said Hazid. “I’ll say nothing without a Sighted-caste in the room with us. I know the statutes.”

  Elspeth took him by the arm into a small room. A rhox was seated there in white robes. “Gwafa Hazid, this is the monk Hollin. He’s of Sighted caste and will be monitoring our conversation.”

  “I … No. It’s not good enough. I demand someone else.”

  “You must be very interested in delaying this conversation, Hazid,” said Elspeth. “But it won’t work. This proceeding is perfectly lawful—which you well know, since you know the statutes, as you say.”

  Hazid grimaced with disgust and sat down.

  “Please state your name and title,” said Elspeth.

  Hazid sighed. “Gwafa Hazid, master merchant of the Grand Caravan,” he said.

  Elspeth glanced at the monk. He nodded.

  “Were you at Giltspire Castle six weeks ago?” asked Elspeth.

  “My caravan goes through there every few months. I had the proper permits.”

  “Was your caravan carrying materials for a demolitions spell?”

  “How should I know?” said Hazid. “Have you ever seen my caravan? It’s vast. We carry thousands of pieces of merchandise. I can’t be expected to know every last thing in those wagons.”

  Elspeth glanced at the monk again. He shook his head solemnly.

  “You don’t seem to believe that, Hazid,” said Elspeth. “You’ve got a guilty conscience, haven’t you
? You were going to Giltspire in order to destroy it, weren’t you?”

  “No! That place was falling apart. Everybody knows that. It was unstable, and you can ask any stonemason. My mages only cast a standard charm of good luck in commerce. The place fell down without us.”

  Elspeth looked at the monk.

  The rhox monk leaned in and whispered in her ear. “It’s hard to say,” he said. “He truly seems to believe he’s not at fault.”

  “Can we compel him to tell the truth?” Elspeth whispered back.

  The monk looked shocked. I guess not, Elspeth thought.

  He whispered, “That magic has been illegal since before I was born.”

  “All right,” Elspeth exhaled. She looked back at Hazid. “Who put you up to this?” she asked him.

  “I told you, we were just there to trade. Maybe our commerce spell accidentally backfired, and loosened something in the structure—”

  “The materials we found in your caravan were not a money-luck spell, Hazid. They were a stoneworking spell meant for the deconstruction of architecture, illegal to possess except by certain masons of the Mortar caste.”

  “Then it was a conspiracy,” said Hazid. “I didn’t know they had those.”

  “That’s not what they said,” said Elspeth. “They all had the same story. You assembled them in particular for this trip to Giltspire. You gave them all the scrolls and rehearsed the ritual. They all said that you’re the ringleader here.”

  “They’re lying,” said Hazid. “They all want me framed for this.”

  “They were horrified, Hazid,” said Elspeth. “They didn’t know what was happening until it was over. Most of them wept during our interviews when we told them how many people died in the disaster. What do you say to that?”

  “It wasn’t me, I swear,” said Hazid. “I—I had nothing against Giltspire. I’m a merchant. Why would I want to do something like that? It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my idea.”

  The monk nodded at Elspeth.

  “I believe you, Hazid,” said Elspeth. “I do. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? You’re a rich, powerful merchant. You’ve always skirted the law before. Why do something so blatantly destructive? It flies in the face of reason.”

  “Yes! Thank you. I couldn’t be responsible. It flies in the face of reason! It must have been a fluke. Wrong place at the wrong time, that kind of thing. Just a big misunderstanding.”

  Elspeth put her hand on the arm of the rhox monk. “Hollin, thank you for your guidance today. I’d like you to step out now.”

  The rhox was taken aback. Astonishment was never easy to read in a rhox’s expression, but Elspeth could see traces of it in the monk’s stony face.

  “It’s all right, Hollin,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s not that. Elspeth, child, you can’t ask him any questions without a Sighted here,” the monk said. “You could … You could endanger the conviction!”

  Hazid looked back and forth between the two of them. His lips formed the trace of a smirk.

  Elspeth was firm. “Thank you. But I’ll apprise you of any questions I ask Mr. Hazid at a later time. Please go.”

  The rhox registered one last complaint into Elspeth’s gaze, but disengaged. He shot a look at Hazid, who knew enough to look away, and walked out, shutting the door behind him.

  “Wanted some one-on-one time, did you?” said Hazid, amused.

  “Yes I did,” said Elspeth.

  Hazid grinned and leaned toward her. “That’s good. I work best this way. Head to head. Trader to trader.”

  “Sit back, Mr. Hazid. I’m going to ask you some strange-sounding questions. I require your honesty here. Your answers could be of grave importance not just to your own situation, but to all of Bant.”

  Hazid’s grin melted. “Why? What do you mean?”

  “Have you recently been in contact with anyone … strange? Anyone who you thought might be from a foreign land?”

  Hazid scoffed. “No lands are foreign to me. I’ve been all over Bant.”

  Elspeth blinked. “You haven’t heard, have you?”

  “Heard what? They tell me nothing in that stupid cell.”

  “Never mind. You’re well-traveled, as you say, so you’re in a position to know. Who have you talked to?. The plan with the demolition spell. Did someone put you up to that?”

  “I—” Hazid stopped himself. His eyes moved all around the room, resting briefly on everything but Elspeth.

  “Who was it?”

  “I can’t tell you,” said Hazid. “It sounds crazy.”

  “Try me. Many others wouldn’t understand, which is why I dismissed Hollin. But I’ll believe you.”

  “I can’t. He … He promised I would die if I told anyone.”

  “I can protect you.”

  Hazid chuckled. It wasn’t a happy sound. “Not from him.”

  “Hazid,” said Elspeth. “Do you know anything about the tremors we’ve felt lately? And the storms?”

  “I know nothing.” His eyes were round. “But I suspect.”

  “What do you suspect?”

  “I know it’s him. He’s coming for me. He promised me such power—but he tricked me and made me ruin the castle. There’s only doom for me now. He said he would come for me, to take me away from the consequences. Now I know he won’t save me. He’s used me.”

  “Who?”

  “The dragon.”

  BANT

  Mubin studied the passages in the prayer book. Manually copied in a neat hand, the ink seemed to march across and down the page. The language of prophecy wasn’t fluid and poetic, but rather quite particular, creating the impression that the author had stared directly at the future, and struggled to reproduce it with faithful precision. Surprisingly, for being called the Prayer of Asha, the prophecy mentioned Asha almost as an afterthought, attributing to her the role of savior after war had already broken out.

  Most of all, the prayer urged unity. Mubin would normally have found the ideal pleasant; Bant’s road of history had been paved with regular battles of territory and trade. But the unity was couched in language of war. It was the unity of a military force assembled to strike down a vague foe, not the unity of a community in harmony. It was the unity of a world too fearful to greet, and too eager to destroy.

  The Prayer of Asha, he decided, asked for Bant to come together like fingers in a fist.

  Mubin realized where he had heard the prayer before. The word choice, the meter, the imagery—it was familiar, And he finally grasped where he had seen it last.

  He picked up the small copper bell on the side table and rung it. The noise was frustratingly pathetic.

  He waited. No one came.

  He had to get across the country, that day, he thought, and that was what he was reduced to? The little prayer bell mocked him. He was a grown rhox, hundreds of pounds of solid muscle, and he couldn’t walk to the door, get on his steed, and ride where he needed to go.

  He looked up at the window. It was at eye level, for a standing person, across the room on the opposite wall. Daylight and a scene of serene trees shone through it, and the promise of being heard. That window was the key.

  He threw the bell at the window. It bounced off the glass and landed on the floor with a jangling sound. The thin copper instrument just didn’t have enough mass to crack the glass.

  He would have to drag himself across the floor, and then raise himself up somehow.

  “I can do it,” he said to himself.

  He leaned over the side of the bed and pulled on the headboard, lurching his body to the edge of the bed. He craned an arm out to reach the floor, and his weight slumped partway onto it He was poised delicately halfway out of the bed, halfway on the floor. The muscles in his arm strained.

  By inching his arm farther out, he pulled his bulk closer to the verge of the drop-off. He lifted his hips, pulled them, and rested them again, so that they teetered on the edge.

  He inhaled and exhaled, and steeled his reso
lve.

  He pushed off the bed, letting his hips and legs fall. His lower body was dead weight; it free-fell to the hard wooden floor, smacking down loudly. He expected pain, but felt none—it just looked bad. His legs looked strange, having fallen haphazardly against each other. He straightened them with his hands, and then he collapsed, heaving breaths.

  Why couldn’t they just hear the damned bell? On the other hand, why had he given up on the tiny, tinkling instrument so quickly? He could be resting comfortably in bed, ringing its little heart out, waiting for a cleric to come. Instead he was on the floor, and the bell was on the other side of the room somewhere.

  He needed to go. There was no time for him to waste feeling sorry for himself.

  He eyed the window. He pushed up on his elbows, then with a mighty shove, flopped himself over onto his stomach. He was facing the wall at the head of the bed, opposite the window. He did a push-up, then began moving hand over hand in a gradual arc around to the opposite wall.

  His legs trailed after him. He was useless on land, he thought. He should just drag himself to the ocean and become a fish, flopping his tail about in the sea.

  He pushed himself up onto his arms, then collapsed forward onto his face, gaining a few inches. He performed the ritual over and over again. When did he become so incredibly heavy?

  Next came the hard part. His head was below the window, and the glass was high out of reach. Perhaps he should just gore the wall with his horn, he thought. If he missed the stud, he could probably make it through the layers of wood and shingle in an hour or so, and the sound might be enough to attract someone.

  No good. It was the window or nothing.

  He turned back to the bed, facing the foot, a few feet from the wall with the window. The bed’s nearest post was tall enough that if he could lift his weight on it, he could probably fall toward the wall and reach the window.

  He grasped the bedpost, got a firm grip, and pulled.