Future Sight

by John Delaney

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “I believe you. But it’s not just you at risk,” Jhoira said. “Everyone everywhere is a potential victim. You could undo all of the progress we have made so far, or worse.”

  “I could also save you a lot of trouble,” Jeska said, “by actually doing something. None of us really knows.” She watched their faces for a moment then sighed again. “I’m sorry. I appreciate your help, but I need to think this through.”

  “You’re still deciding,” Teferi said.

  Jeska’s lip curled at the bald wizard, but she held her tongue. “In the meantime,” she said to Jhoira, “don’t worry about me. I promise to contact you before I do anything near the rifts…not that I’m determined to do anything. I may still try to find Karn before I consider anything else.” Jeska gave them a tight smile. “I wish you luck. We may meet again, but if you need me, call out to me.” Her smile faded and her jaw clenched. I’ll hear you.

  “We’ll call,” Jhoira said. “Especially if we find out more about Karn.”

  “I’ll do the same.” Jeska paused to glance at Venser. “Artificer. Thanks again for showing me what you saw.”

  Venser looked down. “You’re welcome. I admired Karn a great deal.”

  Dust and lightning danced around Jeska, almost concealing the fresh tears that had formed in her eyes. When the squall died down and Jeska was gone, Teferi turned from the empty patch of marsh and addressed Jhoira. “Yavimaya?”

  “Yavimaya,” Jhoira said. She saw Venser’s confusion and she said, “Formerly Argoth, where the Brother’s War was fought. We saw its explosive conclusion when we all were cast into the rift network.”

  Venser nodded. “So it’s recovered since then.”

  Teferi laughed. “And then some. But I’m still waiting to hear why Jhoira has settled on it as our next objective.”

  “Because Yavimaya is the most powerful source of green mana on the planet. The forest has always had a huge collective consciousness, the sum of all the creatures who dwell there. Yavimayan plants and insects and animals all respond to the forest’s direction as they would their own natural instincts to run, fight, hunt, or mate.”

  Venser shifted nervously. “Another wild place,” he said. “Will we be able to talk to it, or do we have to be part of the collective?”

  Teferi watched Jhoira as he answered Venser. “No worries there. Anyone can talk to Yavimaya.”

  “How?”

  “Through Multani,” Jhoira said. “He is the forest’s avatar, its proxy and representative to the rest of the world. He speaks with Yavimaya’s voice and employs its magical force.”

  “Is he…friendly?”

  “Yes. We’ve worked with him in the past, often and to good effect.” Jhoira treated Teferi to a smile, which he returned.

  “I like this plan. If we can’t find a planeswalker, Multani is the next best thing. With the forest behind him, he might be enough.”

  “More than enough, I hope.” Jhoira nodded, her thoughts turning inward. “I’m glad you agree.”

  “What about Jeska?”

  “There isn’t much we can do about Jeska. She’s a planeswalker, so there’s no telling what she’ll do, if she does anything. We have to trust that she’s true to her word and that she’ll contact us before she acts. In the meantime we consult with Multani.” A small kernel of an idea rapidly expanded into a full-fledged plan as she spoke. “It would have been better if Jeska had come with us to the forest. Yavimaya and Multani have persuaded planeswalkers before, and they might have helped us convince Jeska to join us.” Her easy expression tightened. “But one thing at a time. First let’s get to Yavimaya and find Multani.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard.” Teferi’s eyes twinkled. “In a very real sense, he is the forest. He’ll know we’re there as soon as our feet touch the ground.”

  “Venser? When can you and the ambulator both be ready to travel?”

  “Any time,” Venser said. “Though I do wish we were going to Zhalfir. It’d be nice to have a simple crisis to deal with.”

  “Cheer up, my boy.” Teferi clapped Venser on the back. “We’re making progress, simplifying the problem. Things should get easier from here on.”

  Venser said to Jhoira, “Does it ever actually work that way?”

  “Never,” Teferi said brightly. He clapped Venser again as he walked past the artificer. “So we’ll just have to be prepared for anything.”

  As Venser turned toward his machine, Jhoira heard him mutter, “What’s left that we haven’t already seen?” This amused her but also reminded her of how limited Venser’s experience truly was. She was a thousand years old and hadn’t seen one-tenth of the Multiverse’s marvels or its horrors. Even she was daunted by the prospect of showing up in the forest unexpected. Multani and Yavimaya had bested Urza and beaten back the hordes of Phyrexia as they sank their roots deep into the bedrock of Dominaria. If the forest proved hostile, there was very little they could do to protect themselves.

  Jhoira felt a sudden rush of anticipation, the thrill of a discovery that might change the way she saw and understood the world, assuming the world survived: How would the most potent natural force on the planet react to the most unnatural phenomenon of the time rifts?

  Jeska could have gone anywhere to gather her thoughts. There were a hundred different planes she could have ’walked to, each with a thousand different destinations. She could return to realms where she and Karn had been hailed as returning gods, or those where they had been attacked as demonic invaders.

  Her problem was one of direction. Karn had always chosen their path in the past, but Karn was gone. She had not been able to sense his presence or get a fix on his whereabouts since he disappeared into the past. With no way to proceed, her search for Karn seemed over before it truly began.

  She would never permanently abandon Karn, but the rift phenomena was becoming her first priority just as it had become his. The Pardic people were pragmatic, after all, and she saw and felt the rift network’s dangerous impact all across Dominaria. Also, Teferi was partially right, the best way to honor Karn was to finish the good work he started. With the whole of the Multiverse open to her, Jeska found there was truly only one place for her to go, the one place she had successfully avoided since ascending to planeswalker status centuries ago. It was time to go home.

  Several lifetimes of painful memories were almost enough to keep Jeska away from the small, irregular landmass known as Otaria. Her life had started there, ended there, and restarted there on several occasions. Otaria was where she first encountered Karn, where she became his apprentice, so it was only fitting to mark the end of their partnership there as well.

  She arrived near her tribal lands at the northeastern edge of the Pardic mountains. She didn’t need transcendent perceptions or Jhoira’s primer to know how desperate the land had become—one look was more than enough.

  The crisp, sharp peaks of the Pardic mountains had been worn and eroded down into diffuse, rounded stubs. The square-edged lane that had been worn into the rocks by ten decades of Pardic boots was now a slight depression only inches below the surface of the surrounding rocks. The sky was a solid cloud of haze and smoke, and the air tasted bitter and stale.

  Jeska settled onto the trail and flinched. Touching Otaria once more brought back a flood of memories and experiences she preferred to forget. She trembled slightly as the ghostly echoes rang in her head, the sounds of all-out war and the lamentations of a starving multitude. Jeska gathered her strength and shut out the sounds, concentrating on where she was rather than what she had been.

  Physical contact with the also ground confirmed what she already knew: There was precious little mana left here. The mountains, once Otaria’s chief source of magic, were only a pale ghost of their former selves, a depleted storehouse of Pardia’s formidable iron-and-stone magic. Over the generations, Jeska’s people had been shaped by their proximity to this mana, hardened and burnished until their skin shone like b
rass. She was one of them, but she had been tempered by other magical forces, broken and reforged into a bastard alloy that showed very little of her original Pardic coloring. She paused to scan the nearby ridges for any signs of her tribe, to confront the brass-skinned peers from her past, but there was nothing alive on the mountain but her.

  She reached out to the rest of the continent, examining it as a planeswalker would, seeing it as a collection of disparate magical energies that functioned as a single, coherent system. She suffered a wave of fresh anguish as she realized Otaria was dying. The fertile farmlands to the north and south were fallow and neglected, almost hidden beneath huge rolling clouds of dust. The mighty Krosan forest had burned and was still burning in places. Once thick with strong trees and robust predators, Krosan stood now as a smoking collection of black, limbless trunks and vast mounds of ash.

  To the east, bulging, asymmetrical rock formations dominated the waters of Balshan Bay. The reefs choked the inlet, restricting boat access for fishers and merchants and anyone else who tried to come and go via the sea. The whole bay area was completely deserted, and Jeska imagined the seagoing fishers and merchants must have given up on Balshan a long time ago.

  Jeska’s mental survey ended, and she came back to herself atop the weathered peaks of the Pardic mountains. With a clenched jaw and a hand on her sword, she forced herself to look down. Her eyes traveled past the base of the mountain and slowly across the vast expanse of salt marsh, finally coming to rest on the black stone and broken architecture of Cabal City.

  She was both gratified and disturbed to see how far the place had fallen. It gladdened her to see it diminished and dead, but its death was part of Otaria’s larger disaster. The huge, walled city had been one of the region’s largest and busiest places, the northern headquarters of a criminal black-magic syndicate that styled itself as an extended family.

  Cabal City was the central marketplace for sin, self-indulgence, and conspicuous consumption, offering all the dark delights Otarians decried in public but pursued in private. One could acquire anything in Cabal City for the right price: pit fighting, blood sports, and other violent spectacles; narcotics and intoxicating magic; slaves, either for life or for a few hours of carnal distraction in the flesh pits.

  Otarians used to say that everyone goes to Cabal City eventually. Jeska’s own experience bore this out, as literally everyone she knew—including herself—had gone there of their own free will. Over the years she had extensive dealings with the Cabal and its monstrous Patriarch, and her experience also bore out a codicil to the old Otarian saying, one that was rarely said above a whisper and never inside the city walls: Everyone goes to Cabal City, but not everyone comes back.

  The silhouette of the central, domed arena and its surrounding towers had once watched over the city like the skull of a giant, black devil. Now the dome had long since caved in, and its proud, sharp horns were broken and shattered.

  Jeska steeled herself again. Cabal City had been wrecked when she was still human, so she could look in its broken face without guilt. She bore no direct responsibility for its ruin, something that could not be said for the rest of Otaria’s blasted countryside and leveled cityscapes.

  She closed her eyes and sent her mind out into the nation again, and though she encountered no living thing Jeska still heard the voices cursing her, worshiping her, and begging for her favor and the blessed release of death with equal enthusiasm. She had been many things to the people of her homeland: a warrior who commanded cheers; a leader of armies who commanded respect and fear, and a divine tyrant who commanded total obedience and messianic rapture. She had been the mother of a god, and in his name sparked a conflict that split the nation into opposing halves. She had then become a god herself, who transcended all others and subjugated Dominaria itself.

  The voices grew muted, but Jeska heard them still. She closed her eyes, and she saw the tens of thousands who had fled from her in terror…and the far greater number who followed in her wake, screaming themselves hoarse with adulation as they withered and starved.

  Jeska opened her eyes. Otaria bore the brunt of her activities, and the names of its ruined places were as familiar to Jeska as her own. She remembered each locale as it was centuries ago, whole and proud and teeming with activity.

  Here was Aphetto, the Cabal’s southern stronghold and main base of operations after their first city fell. Their new headquarters quickly eclipsed the old, in no small part due to Jeska’s dominance of the fighting pits. Everyone wanted to see her fight and kill and emerge victorious. Her only serious defeat came outside the pits, far from the roaring crowds, at the hands of Kamahl, her own power-mad brother.

  Jeska’s hand traced absently over her stomach. Half-killing her had jarred Kamahl out of his megalomania, but it had also pushed him farther away from her, away from the mountains and their brethren toward the rough, savage ways of the Krosan forest. He regretted wounding her, agonized over it for years afterward, but remorse did not set in until long after he had abandoned Jeska and left her care to whomever had happened by.

  As it happened, the Cabal had happened by. Its healers and witches used their dark arts to save her life and restore her to health, but they were Cabalists, and no one walks away from a Cabal debt. In saving her they rebuilt her body and mind, infusing her with the power of the swamps until everything else she knew was completely submerged. She became Phage, who was entirely their creature, their warrior-chief who fought only for the advancement and amusement of the Cabal.

  Jeska came out of herself and clenched her jaw. Aphetto had been a place of great loss and suffering for her, but it had also been a kind of home. When her actual kin ripped open her belly and left her behind, the Cabal’s false family took her in and gave her purpose. Now Aphetto was almost nothing, its buildings flattened and their foundations swallowed up by the marsh.

  Her thoughts shifted, and her body followed. Here was Topos, a magnificent realm that had been wrought from the desert by a reality-twisting wizard. This wizard sculpted an entire kingdom out of the trackless wastes for himself to rule, raising cities out of the wasteland’s heat and grit, populating those cities with people from his imagination, then creating an army to protect it all. As Phage, Jeska had fought beside Cabalists and forest beasts in the so-called Nightmare War that ultimately leveled Topos and deposed its mad god-king. If there was any pride left from her tenure as a Cabalist, it came from leading her armies in that war, from the comradeship and respect she commanded from her officers and infantry alike.

  Her pride shamed her and Jeska moved on. Here was Averru, known as Sanctum, a site of great magical and strategic import. Phage took control of the great city for herself and her Cabal masters, but not through martial strength. Instead, she had used guile and the same subtle corruption that originally attracted Otarians to Cabal City. When the population of Sanctum was thick with loyal Cabalists and her own personal following, Phage took control of the city and all its rich rewards.

  Once seized, the precious jewel had proved too hard to hold through politics and manipulation alone. To preserve her position Jeska had raised an army and waged full-scale war against angels, men, and legions of monsters. Neither she nor her rivals had understood that the city itself was alive…not until it turned against them at the war’s conclusion. In that final cataclysmic battle, Sanctum itself had died along with countless thousands of others. Kamahl had had a hand in the war’s explosive end, which also ended Phage…though Jeska’s spirit endured and went on to far greater triumphs and far darker terrors.

  More ruins flashed past her mind’s eye as she revisited Eroshia, but before Jeska could fully examine the place or her own feelings a voice interrupted her.

  “Otaria is not what it was.” The voice was clear and respectful, but it tingled along Jeska’s spine like a rattlesnake’s hiss. “But then again, nothing ever is. Nothing and no one.”

  Jeska turned to see a tall, thin man with lilac-colored skin and a halo of glowing c
oals. He was bald, and his eyes were hidden under an opaque, gray film. Jeska’s first thought was of the Cabal Patriarch, who resembled this newcomer, but the Patriarch was long dead. He was also icy and reserved where this fellow was smiling warmly.

  “Hail, Jeska, Thrice-Touched by Infinity.” The man bowed but tilted his face so that his eyes stayed on the Pardic warrior. “I am Leshrac.”

  “You’re a planeswalker,” Jeska said. Apart from Karn and a small handful of others, every planeswalker she had ever met had wanted to fight. She readied herself.

  Leshrac straightened, still staring calmly despite Jeska’s obvious tension. “I am. One of two presently on this peak.”

  Jeska felt the strong flow of eldritch energy around Leshrac. She could see it if she concentrated, and it worried her. The vivid stream of liquid light glowed purple and black as it coiled around Leshrac’s body, bursting with more black mana than in all of the nearby marshes.

  As Jeska watched, Leshrac’s very presence called out to swamp, stirring the last and most deeply embedded vestiges of its magic. Wasted and mana-bereft as they were, the salt flats hissed and bubbled as the last grubby wisps of their power rose and collected into a thick, brown fog. The fog slowly drifted toward the planeswalker with the halo of coal.

  If Leshrac were the combative type, Jeska wasn’t sure how to react. An all-out duel would take a terrible toll on the landscape, and after her sobering tour she could not allow herself to do Otaria any more harm. She also didn’t relish the idea of battling a black magician inside a cloud of stinking Cabal swamp magic.

  Leshrac maintained his polite posture. “Do you require more of an introduction?” he said. “I have a long list of names and titles I could recite for you. We could compare ranks and pseudonyms until we each find one the other recognizes.”

  “Don’t bother,” Jeska said. At least Leshrac posed no obvious danger. He was unarmed and not channeling the whiplike stream of mana that swirled around him. “Keep your distance and state your business.”