by Doug Beyer
Energy blasted outward from Ajani, throwing a metaphysical gust around the maelstrom gorge. The blast shook the earth with one savage jolt, and for a moment, everything stopped. Mages and dragons both halted their assault, and looked around bewildered.
The outburst of rage subsided, and became a simple breeze ruffling Ajani’s fur.
All the combatants recovered then, and attempted to rejoin their fight—but found that their mana bonds had all been severed. They had no mana to fuel their spells, and the essence of the dragons’ flames had drained away.
Smoke wafted from Ajani’s fur.
The dragons spiraled high up into the air, screeching in rage. Sarkhan slapped the flanks of the hellkite Karrthus with his heels, and the two of them veered away from the fight. All the dragons beat their wings hard, retreating somewhere in the direction of Jund.
A cheer went up among the elves and nacatl.
“Ajani, you did it,” said Zaliki. “I don’t know how you did it, but you stopped their magic.”
Ajani nodded, exhausted.
“And I can’t thank you enough,” said the dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas, as he appeared out of the sky.
BANT
Ajani watched with awe as the oily-scaled elder dragon descended from the savage sky above the mana maelstrom. The creature’s scales matched the dragonscale spheres he had seen used to sow chaos on Naya, but the sense of majesty Ajani felt radiating from the beast was the way he truly knew he faced the one behind the plane-spanning plot to create the maelstrom.
“Hello, little walker,” said Bolas.
Ajani had only a dim sense of the action around him, of the elves and nacatl attempting to attack Bolas. As Ajani had destroyed their mana bonds, the humanoids were powerless to attack him. Bolas looked from side to side as he landed before Ajani, killing dozens with a thought. Ajani saw elves, humans, and nacatl he knew dying by the moment.
“Retreat, all of you!” shouted Ajani. “Go!”
With Sarkhan’s dragons dispersed and the black dragon killing them at will, they didn’t need more instruction than that. All around the two planeswalkers, the armies fled in every direction.
“Ajani, don’t do this,” cried Zaliki. “Don’t put yourself in evil’s way.”
“Someone has to,” Ajani told her. “Go, Zaliki. Now.”
Goodbye, he thought after her as she reluctantly turned in the direction of Naya, and he watched her run out of the gorge with the Cloud Nacatl warriors.
Bolas watched them go, a bemused curl warping his lips. Then he turned his head to Ajani, the tiny nacatl before him, and folded his claws together.
THE MAELSTROM
You took a while to show up, little walker,” said Bolas.
“I need to stop overestimating mortals.”
“I’ve been looking,” snarled Ajani. “You’ve been hiding.”
“Hiding? Hardly. I’ve been a step away from you your whole life, little cat. Tantalizingly close. My door’s been wide open. But I don’t blame you for your clumsy mistakes. You’ve only just learned to take your first steps. To you I seemed so far away, so ineffable, so unreal. You didn’t even have anything in your experience to compare me to, did you? You had no frame of reference, no theoretical web in which to embed the monumental idea of me. So you couldn’t know. You were literally incapable of knowing. I’ve seen distances you couldn’t imagine—how could you? Your imagination has been closed inside the boundaries of a singular world. But it didn’t make sense, did it? Your brother’s death? The coincidences? The sums didn’t balance. Little Naya just was too shallow a bowl to hold all the facts.”
Ajani seethed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Ah, but what now? What’s the next link in this chain, little walker? Will you get your revenge? Will you—kill me? Put your dead brother’s axe in my guts, and wiggle the handle till I’m dead? Stop me from fulfilling my goals here on your beloved worlds? And after that, what, march home a champion? I’m sorry; I don’t mean to be flip. It is very important to you, I know. But you can’t see. You can’t see how painfully trite you are. There’ll be no pathos in your death, Ajani Goldmane, no grand nobility. Only the shabby banality of a thousand indistinguishable upstarts.”
With that, Bolas flicked his claw, and blasted Ajani back with the force of a meteor. Ajani slammed backward into the slope of the gorge, and slumped limp.
“I’ve lived hundreds of your lifetimes,” continued Bolas. “I’ve survived more apocalypses than you’ve had chest colds. I’ve experienced more of this cosmos than any being there has ever been. And you think you’re going to stand in my way, matchstick? You think you’re the one to finally take me down? I can tell you now, if Nicol Bolas is to fall, it won’t be because of the likes of you.”
Ajani elbowed his way off his back into a sitting position. With his weight on one arm and blood dripping from his mouth, he spoke. “For being so old, you throw a tantrum like a child.”
Bolas snarled and snapped his arm back in the other direction. Ajani flew bodily across the gorge, slamming sideways into the ground again.
Ajani groaned and coughed blood onto the walls of the gorge. He searched his mouth with his tongue and felt two teeth loose, but clenched them into place with his jaw.
Bolas approached. “Again, you’re centuries too late to play the insolent, devil-may-care hero. It’s been done far too many times, and by better beings than you. It’s played out. You don’t have a million-to-one chance, little walker. This isn’t your once-in-a-lifetime shot at the hero’s truimph. This is you, flyswatted.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” muttered Ajani. “Your plan.”
Bolas grinned. “See how it pleads for additional moments? See how it strings together its last breaths, hoping to stall for time, so it can find that crucial way out of the impossible situation?”
“If I’m so insignificant, why the roundabout plot to kill me, Bolas? Why the spells carried by underlings? Why the white cat prophecies? If I’m nothing, why go to all that trouble? And if I’m not nothing, if I could represent some kind of threat to you, why be so coy? Why not just planeswalk to Naya and murder me in my crib?”
“You’re right, of course,” replied Bolas. “I am prone to theatrics. When one has no peers, one likes to entertain oneself, you see? It’s self-indulgent, I admit, but I do like to watch my own symphony play itself out.”
“No,” said Ajani, his mouth bleeding. “That isn’t why. That’s not why you sent all the intermediaries, why you had everyone do your dirty work but yourself. I think it’s because you’ve tasted your own mortality. You’re powerful, but you understand you have weaknesses. I can see it in you. Even you, ancient dragon, are afraid.”
Bolas’s cheek spikes fanned out, and his chest filled with rage. The energies from the whirling maelstrom lit him from behind, casting his face into blackness. He spread his wings out, looking like a god, and stretched his claws toward Ajani’s face.
But then he stopped and stepped back.
“Tut, tut,” he said. “You almost made me forget what I was here to do.”
Bolas turned and stepped into the center of the maelstrom.
Ajani shielded his eyes. The maelstrom exploded into a sphere of light, drenching the dragon planeswalker in waves of power. The force of the blast crushed Ajani into the wall of the chasm, feeling like a continuous barrage of electric shocks. There was either no sound, or so much sound that Ajani had gone deaf.
Unable to cope with complex thought, Ajani’s mind repeated one phrase over and over: He’s done it. He’s done it.
The explosion of power died down to a mere hurricane. Ajani’s sense of hearing returned: a thunderous, continuous roar. Ajani squinted into the light, and perceived the contours of a draconic being coiled into a fetal position.
The dragon moved within the radiance. Its wings opened; its arms and legs stretched out; its tail uncoiled and spread long and majestic; its head reared up to the empty sky; its mouth opened. It was unmistakabl
y Bolas, but Ajani thought he looked larger than he had been, or somehow more grandiose. He had no scars or wounds, no frayed scales on his pinions, no scruffy patches at his joints. He was smooth, sleek, a study in armored scale stretched over lean muscle. He had become everything that his potential allowed him to be: he was a divinity of the Multiverse.
Bolas let loose a roar that tore the firmament ragged, reverberating through all of existence. Ajani felt pain wrack his body for the duration of the roar. That’s it, he thought. The is the end of my life, and worse: the end of all life on my world. Bolas is done with our plane. He’ll crumple Alara into dust, and destroy everyone on it.
The dragon ascended out of the maelstrom slowly, surging with power. The winds slackened, and Ajani saw that as Bolas moved out of the nucleus, the energy there diminished rapidly. The glow of power followed Bolas and then disappeared into him, leeched away by his body. All that was left behind was a tiny sun-ball floating above the spiral depression in the land, a meek swirl of energy no bigger than Ajani was tall. Bolas had almost absorbed it all.
The dragon looked down at Ajani, his expression inscrutable. Was he murderous or benevolent? Did he even have emotions, or just an intelligence so vast that his mind operated solely in pure thought?
Bolas spoke, and his voice was everywhere at once. “I fear nothing.”
“Don’t do it, Bolas,” shouted Ajani up at the dragon god. “Just go. You’ve done enough damage here.”
“Why should I not? It’s a disgrace now, a ruin bereft of value.”
“No. It’s my world.”
With a mighty leap, Ajani dived into what remained of the maelstrom. It enveloped him, suspending him in the air, filling him with a rush of mana that overloaded his senses.
With even a fraction of the power of the maelstrom, Ajani was overwhelmed. He couldn’t believe Bolas had held any more than that—he felt the efforts of thousands of mages all at once, channeling their magics at one another, feeding him with their power.
Ajani closed his physical eyes, and his inner one opened.
AJANI GOLDMANE
The world was stark and featureless: a white void.
“Ajani,” said his brother’s voice.
He turned. Before him stood Jazal: silver-furred, kind-faced, and alive, at least in spirit. Ajani realized that their hands were clasped together.
“Jazal, I’ve been searching,” said Ajani.
“I know.”
“I … I can’t avenge you. I’m sorry. The real killer—the being ultimately responsible for your death—he’s out there. He’s far more powerful than me.”
“I know.”
“And Zaliki—she was misled. It wasn’t her fault. She loves you.”
“I know. It’s all right, Ajani.”
“I’m sorry I failed you.”
“Is that what you’ve done?”
“Yes. It was all too big for me. The murder, the five worlds, the multiverse—everything was bigger than I imagined. It was too much for me to handle.”
“That’s the first thing you have to learn before you can rise to accomplish grander things.”
“But that’ll never happen. It’s over. He won. I didn’t catch on in time to stop him—his plans are complete. He gained the power he sought. There’s no way I can put you to rest—and even worse, our world, all of Alara, is about to be used up and tossed aside.”
“You’re still here, aren’t you? You haven’t given up. If you’re still committed to what must be done, then there’s still a chance. Listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“No, really listen. You’re standing in the core of Alara, its beating heart. This is what I was searching for, the possibility that there was something underneath all the lies of Marisi and his master. This is it, this core of mana, composed of threads of lives from every corner of Alara. It’s what Bolas wanted to feed on, and what you have the opportunity to learn from. So listen.”
“I hear … echoes.”
“Yes. What does it mean, Ajani? What are they telling you?”
“I can almost hear them …”
Ajani felt Jazal’s hands slipping away.
“Jazal? Wait! Don’t go!”
“What are they telling you, Ajani?” His face, and his voice, were growing fainter, vanishing into the white nothingness. Even as Ajani reached for him, he faded.
“Jazal!”
THE MAELSTROM
Bolas laughed. “This won’t do it, little walker. You can’t match me by feeding on my scraps. Even all the mages in this world couldn’t stop me.”
“Maybe not,” said Ajani. “But one thing can.”
The voices of every spellcaster in Alara spoke to Ajani at once. Their near-limitless knowledge, for one cacophonous moment, was clear to him. Ajani could see it. Deep inside Bolas was a spark, an eternal essence, just like any other mortal being. Perhaps he wasn’t bound by the same rules as other beings; the power Ajani perceived there was blinding, mind-splitting. But the dragon still shared that simple, essential core of consciousness, that quintessence that some called soul. And though Ajani couldn’t strike down that soul, he could do the reverse—he could nurture it, cause it to blossom, and will its essence into being.
“You’ve always brought out the best in others, Ajani,” he imagined Jazal saying. “That was always your gift.”
Ajani evoked the essence of Bolas.
Energy coursed out of Bolas’s chest like a stream of star-encrusted aether, crashing into the depression left by the maelstrom, and splashing against the rim to curve in on itself. The stream warped and distorted as a form took shape.
At first it looked like a dragon made of surreal air-distortion, suffused with an ultraviolet glow. As it continued to cohere, detail after detail resolved like a distant image coming into focus until it was a glowing, astral reflection of Bolas himself.
The two dragon-beings regarded one another, their movements curiously alike. Their mimicry infuriated one another, and they howled, a sonic mirror. The two dragons crashed into one another, grappling each other in rage. They both knew that they were the greatest threat to one another in all of Alara. They both knew each other’s power and treachery, and knew that giving an opening to the other would mean their own destruction. Magical energies pulsed out of them as each one struggled to conquer the mind and soul of the other, trying to use the other as their pawn; both of them countered the other with magic designed to prevent the psychic assault. They surged with the power of the mana storm, one in the form of scaly flesh, the other in the form of starry aether.
Ajani crawled up the slope, out of the valley of the maelstrom. He could feel the two dragon-beings’ power thunderclapping against one another, hear their claws scraping for purchase on each other’s scales. He could feel the raw potential lashing out from them, the tension rising as they fought at the center of the storm. If one of them decided to destroy the other, Ajani thought, then both of them undoubtedly would, and all of Alara would be consumed in their fury. It was up to them—the choice belonged, ultimately, to Bolas, and the nature of his soul. Ajani hurried up the slope, attained the rim of the crater, and turned back to the dragons.
The Bolases were perfectly matched—each blow was met with counterblow, each attempt to gain advantage slapped aside with perfect precision. They were one vast intelligence racing to outdo itself, one mind trying to exceed its own potential—and they were failing.
Suddenly the dragons reared back, gazed with pure hatred into one another’s eyes, and then thrust their necks forward and snapped their jaws onto one another. The streaming energy of the maelstrom enveloped the draconic ouroboros, and a flash of thunderous light overwhelmed Ajani’s senses.
There was nothing for several moments, only light and silence.
I’ve failed, thought Ajani. Alara has been destroyed.
Then, slowly, the sound of the wind returned to Ajani’s ears. The sensation of it blowing in his fur felt strange, as if he’d forgotten what it
felt like to feel something so simple. Gradually, the aggressive light faded, and the world emerged before his eyes again. The crater was empty. There were no dragons, and there was no storm of mana. The valley was filled only with the wind.
Ajani sat down heavily. The breeze ruffled his coat, fine white fur newly tinted with wisps of gold. Nothing else stirred.
Ajani sat at the edge of the valley for a long time, waiting for Bolas to return and devour the rest of Alara. But he never did.
BANT
Elspeth? You called me here?”
The world of Bant was Elspeth’s paradise. She had come as a stranger, a planeswalker escaping from an unspeakable past, yet she had been welcomed as family. Bant was the first place where she truly felt at home, a place she had vowed never to leave.
But now look at it, she thought. It was in ruin. She could see the balefires from her window, pouring smoke composed of the dead into the air. She could see the dead imprinted on her memory, those friends she had sent to their deaths, and the thousands in Asha’s Army who had perished trying to fend off the undead hordes. The world was irrevocably changed. Her home, her family, her Bant, was no more.
“Come in, Knight Mardis,” she said.
Mardis stepped just inside the threshold of her quarters. He seemed almost shy. They hadn’t spoken since the battle with Malfegor, which he had barely survived.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“Of course, Knight-Captain. I trust you’re well?”
That was a strange question.
“I am …well, thank you.” She always lied clumsily. “And you? How is your family?”
“Quite well, thank you for asking.”
He delivered his lies much better, she thought. She knew his family had lost much in the war, as everyone had. Everyone who had real families—unlike her, the orphan from beyond the sky. She felt like the stranger again, as she had felt when she first fell into Bant.