by John Delaney
Venser nodded. “When I crossed into the Blind Eternities,” he said, “it felt different, more strenuous. A lot more work. But I knew I had only gone part of the way and stopped in midtransfer. I never completed the journey.”
“Planar boundaries are more formidable than spatial ones. They require a larger effort that is not possible without an innate spark that connects the traveler to the fabric of reality. When I had it,” he said, “it also opened up an endless supply of mana to me, made me immortal. Yours is different. You’re still flesh and blood, and your facility with mana is unchanged. I think your spark affords you the freedom to go from one realm to another without bestowing any other magical effects.
“And,” he went on, “unlike myself or Freyalise or Windgrace, you can ’walk near the time rifts without disrupting them.” He pointed to the ghastly knot of wood and tumors. “Multani is in there, his essence intermingled with the fabric of the rift. If you planeswalk into the rift, you should be able to latch on to the core of Multani’s being and carry it away with you.”
Jhoira stepped up to her friends. “This will be dangerous, Venser, make no mistake. You might not reach Multani at all. You might reach him and become trapped right along with him. He is our friend, Teferi’s and mine, and we are duty-bound to help him. You can do this. I believe that…but first I have to make sure you really want to.”
“I do,” Venser said.
“Then you should go,” Jhoira said. “Multani has been bound to the rift for a long time. If we free him we can learn what he knows about it. That information will be incredibly useful for sealing this rift, if not all of the ones that remain.”
“I’m ready,” Venser said. “Eager, in fact.”
“Understand that this is still not a true planeswalk,” Teferi said. “You will not be leaving Dominaria, not even to visit the Blind Eternities. The boundaries of the rift are almost identical to interplanar borders, so you may ’walk into the rift just as if it were another plane. Once you’re inside, find Multani and return. Simple, straightforward, direct. Do that and you will be ready to venture out across the Multiverse.”
“Okay,” Venser said. He was staring intently at the deadfall. “How do I find Multani once I’m in?”
I will call to you, Multani’s voice said. Follow the song.
Teferi beamed at Jhoira. “Ready?”
“Ready to start,” she said. “I still want to take this slowly.” Teferi and Jhoira both stepped back to watch Venser and monitor his progress.
“Good luck, Venser.”
“Yes,” Teferi echoed. “We have nothing but confidence in you.”
Venser breathed deeply and closed his eyes to concentrate. Teleportation had been his life’s work, and the ambulator, his masterpiece. He had never truly imagined what he would do once he succeeded and he could rightfully claim the title of master artificer. Teferi and Jhoira had shown him a new goal to strive for, a new purpose that he was determined to explore.
Earlier he had hesitated to teleport for fear of materializing inside a tree, and that same rational concern told him not to teleport into the Multani-mass. This was not teleporting, however, but planeswalking, and he had understood the difference even before Teferi’s eloquent explanation. Teleportation was purely mathematical, the application of magical energy to spatial vectors and coordinates. Planeswalking was more extemporaneous and instinctual, and far more dangerous, akin to sailing a ship through a storm in unfamiliar waters or hitting a bull’s-eye blindfolded as enemy arrows rain down all around.
He closed his eyes now, still picturing the deadfall. Without moving his feet he urged himself forward, reaching out to the cancerous mass with his mind. He felt its outer edges against his skin like a coarse burlap sheet. He paused to test the strength and texture of that sheet. Then Venser pressed through.
For a moment Venser heard a vast, roaring, primal sound like a waterfall cascading into an earthquake fissure while a hurricane raged above. He caught a glimpse of what seemed like the entire universe laid out on a table before him like an endless banquet, and then all was silence.
A great weight settled on him. He felt enervated, as if he’d just come a mile at a dead run. Moist, clammy air wafted around him, and he smelled the pungent odor of rotting meat and vegetable matter. If he came across marshland that smelled like this, he would go out of his way to avoid it.
Here, he continued. Venser sank deeper into the morass, blindly feeling his way by touch alone. He felt inert, untouched by either the damp void or the angry chaos lurking beyond. He kept striving forward until he heard the first buzzing tones of the same Yavimayan minstrel’s bagpipe.
He smiled behind his closed eyes. Multani’s strength was here, palpable but completely alien. It came with none of the bombast or pride he felt from Freyalise or Windgrace. The chorus of haunting voices began and soon the familiar words floated once more to his ears.
Cleave to us, O marsh-reared child…
Venser opened his eyes. He was in the center of a confused network of vines and branches that were studded with grotesque organelles. Spectral, green light shone from the empty spaces in the array, adding a disquieting visual element to the forest’s mournful song.
Here.
Venser looked toward the sound. A now-familiar face emerged from the stricken plant life as Multani’s features took shape. Venser watched until a perfect miniature of the canopy mask had formed.
“Now?” he tried to ask, but his voice made no sound.
Multani replied anyway. Now.
Venser reached out with both hands and curved all ten fingers around the edges of Multani’s mask. Though he was immaterial and without voice or body, he felt the rough, wooden plate against the skin of his hands. The mask warmed under his touch and became ever more solid, more tangible.
The green sheen roiled and tossed around him. Something pulled back on Multani as Venser tried to wrench him free. The forest song died away, replaced by an awful harpy’s wail.
The half-dead matrix around him shuddered and began to split. Thick branches and massive, swollen cysts broke free and dropped, tearing through the rest of the tangle as they fell.
Now, Multani repeated. His voice was strained and anguished. It must be now.
Venser shut his eyes. He locked his grip and reached back to the forest floor with his mind to the spot between Teferi and Jhoira. The green lights began to tug at him, the first licks of their terrible gravity pulling him back. He strained free and ’walked with Multani’s face clasped firmly to his chest.
He appeared back where he started, steaming and reeking of rotten compost. His legs buckled, and he fell to his knees, but he was careful to cradle the wooden mask against his torso as he fell. He crouched for a second, fought to catch his breath, and looked up into Jhoira’s anxious face.
“I did it,” he said. Painfully, he opened his creaking fingers and held Multani up for them both to see. “I did it.”
“Congratulations to you both,” Jhoira said. “And thank you.”
Venser held on to the mask as he regained his feet. Outside the deadfall, the mask seemed little more than lifeless wood. “What now?”
“Remember the song,” Jhoira said. “ ‘Pluck the fruit, plant the seed.’ ”
Venser glanced down at the mask. Multani’s motionless face stared back. Nodding, he sank back down to his knees and began clearing out a space in the dirt. In a matter of seconds it was deep enough for the mask. Venser placed the wooden face in the hole and covered it with soil.
“There,” he said. He stood and dusted his hands. “How long do you think we’ll have to wait?”
“Not long, I hope.” Jhoira turned to Teferi. “Any thoughts?”
Teferi was staring at the ground, lost in thought. He wasn’t even looking at the site where Multani’s seed was buried.
“No,” he said softly. “No, no, no.”
“What’s wrong?”
Teferi’s face snapped toward Jhoira, his expression tig
ht and panicked.
“Jeska’s in Zhalfir,” Teferi said. “She’s about to do something terrible.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. The rift there is—” He rushed up to Venser and grabbed the artificer by both shoulders. “Take us there, Venser. Take us there now.”
“What about Multani?”
“We’ve done all we can for him. Zhalfir needs us now, right now, do you understand?”
“Yes, yes.” Venser pulled Teferi’s clenched fists away from his tunic. He looked to Jhoira, who was staring at Teferi with a strange mixture of hope and regret.
“Do it,” she said. She extended her arm.
There were too many questions, and the only answers he had frightened him. Venser took each of his friends by the hand, concentrated, and then teleported away.
Venser took them straight to the shores of Jamuraa, to the sharp-edged sheer cliffs that marked the former borders of Zhalfir. The Kukemessa Sea was as rough and green as ever, but Teferi’s eyes were drawn to the great, foglike rift floating over land and sky. His first reaction was to wonder how the rift had become visible, but he soon saw the cause. Jhoira and Venser saw it too, and with it the reason for Teferi’s distress.
Jeska held Radha before her, offering her to the rift like a tasty morsel. They were separated by a few feet of space, Jeska’s head down and her arms jutted straight toward Radha’s back. If not for the determination in Jeska’s posture or the anguish in Radha’s, the small, wan Pardic woman and the towering gray-skinned Keldon would have made a comical pair.
For once Teferi didn’t appreciate the humor. The bald wizard was shaking as he alternated between staring at the rift and staring at the coastline.
“This can’t go on,” he said. “Jeska must be stopped.”
“What is she doing?” Venser asked.
A storm wind raged up before Teferi could answer, forcing all three of them to brace themselves. Teferi waited for the wind to die and wondered what answer Jhoira would give if he himself kept silent.
His transcendent perceptions were gone, but Teferi maintained a deep connection to the rift network, and he had several lifetimes’ worth of experience in gauging the flow of mana. Jhoira couldn’t see what he saw, could not understand the awful implications of what they now faced.
Jeska was guiding arcane energy into Radha, filling her with it for some undetermined purpose. As the great rift cloud swirled to a point and crept toward the Keldon, Teferi realized Jeska wasn’t just channeling magic into Radha—she was extending it past Radha, using her infinite power to affect the rift through Radha. So far the Pardic warrior’s efforts were unfocused, blind and grasping as if inching across the bottom of a murky pond, but Teferi could feel the titanic forces clarifying, solidifying, and taking on distinct shape and purpose under the Pardic woman’s focused will.
“She’s using Radha to seal the rift,” Teferi shouted. “But it’s too soon. Zhalfir is not yet ready.”
The Jamuraan coast around them went insane as visible swells and whitecaps formed in the air and jags of blue lightning slid across the glass-smooth surface of the sea. Sand, pebbles, even fist-sized rocks rose into the air and tumbled upward, and stinging rain fell sideways, sharp and fast against the driving wind.
Teferi dropped cross-legged to the ground with his staff planted in the sand in front of him. He steepled his fingers and bowed his head, his lips moving in rapid, precise syllables. The tip of his staff sparkled and glowed, clearing the maelstrom around them and creating an eye of calm.
“You must stop her,” Teferi said. The noise had retreated with the storm, and he spoke softly, urgently. “This will end in catastrophe.”
“How?” Venser said, but Jhoira had already guessed what Teferi had in mind.
“Take us to her,” she said.
“We’ll fall as soon as we arrive.”
Teferi’s staff crackled. Jhoira and Venser rose off the ground, suspended by the bald wizard’s levitating spell. “Problem solved,” he said. “You two go.”
“What will you do?”
“I will try to minimize the impact. If the rift closes before Zhalfir phases back in….Just go,” he said. “I may be able to salvage something if she stops right now.”
Jhoira clamped on to Venser’s hand, shared a nod with Teferi, and said, “Let’s go.”
Even in his panic Teferi noted that Venser was becoming much better in a crisis. Venser paused only briefly to make sure Teferi had no intention of coming with them, then teleported himself and Jhoira to Jeska’s side.
* * *
—
Jhoira and Venser floated for a moment, held aloft by Teferi’s magic and numbed by the scope and fury of their predicament. Jeska still held Radha in front of her like a shield, the new arrivals unnoticed.
“Jeska,” Jhoira said. “Please stop now. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
There was no reply. The violent congress between the two barbarians did not diminish. The rift and Jeska continued to strive against each other through Radha, the Keldon elf little more than their battleground. As dire as the situation was, Jhoira experienced a small twinge of grief for this fiercely independent warrior so callously bent to a planeswalker’s purpose. Not so long ago it had been the warriors of Shiv, her people, who had borne the brunt of a titan’s deeds.
“Jeska,” Venser shouted. “Stop and listen.”
Stay out of this.
Jhoira saw any acknowledgment of their presence as positive. She touched Venser on the shoulder, urging him to speak again. When he silently expressed his confusion, Jhoira said, “She listened to you. Keep her engaged.”
“Jeska. This isn’t the way,” Venser said, though he had not taken his eyes from Jhoira.
It’s the only way.
“Then let us help you. Make us understand, and we can do this together.” As he spoke Venser tried to gauge the effects of his words on Jhoira rather than on Jeska, perhaps less concerned about saying the right thing than about not saying the wrong thing. He spread his arms and said, “This can only make things worse.”
Shut up and get back, you Urborg worm. It’s working.
Venser wavered, and Jhoira didn’t know how to prompt him. She couldn’t argue with the truth—the rift cloud was clearly focused on Radha. It flowed steadily into the Keldon, where it was then contained and perhaps even neutralized by Jeska’s power.
Radha’s screams and the rumbling ground below spoke of the terrible toll Jeska’s actions were taking. Like the rest of her kind, minimizing the harmful effect on Radha and the local landscape did not seem to be among the planeswalker’s priorities.
Venser floated close to Jhoira and said, “Should I try to save Radha like I did Multani?”
Jhoira shook her head. Venser might be able to ’walk or even teleport in to remove Radha from this dangerous equation, but interrupting this process was almost certainly more dangerous than letting it proceed. Disrupting the massive exchange of mystical and temporal energies would almost certainly have a dire, unpredictable result, and Jeska’s ire in the aftermath would be truly explosive.
Here is where our grand policy breaks down, Jhoira thought. To date, the planeswalkers they had dealt with could be convinced by sound argument or compelled by their own sense of responsibility. Now those planeswalkers were used up and gone, leaving three mere mortals to contend with a godlike being who would not be convinced and could not be compelled.
Jeska redoubled her efforts, and Radha’s body contorted anew. The rift seemed to simultaneously surge forward and pull back from the Keldon. Seismic tremors cracked the shoreline below and sent one-hundred-foot-tall waves crashing over the sharp-edged shores.
* * *
—
Jeska was exultant in the full expression of her power. Through Radha she felt the rift churning, resisting her, but that only made the struggle sweeter. The phenomenon stretched and rolled and bubbled, hungrily seeking her out, but it was effectively baffled by the
presence of the Keldon. It could not reach Jeska, could not touch her magically or physically.
She could touch it, however. Buffered through Radha’s unrealized potential, Jeska’s transcendent might was quickly taking control of the rift. In her mind’s eye she stretched her arms wide to encompass the entirety of the vortex and the chaos within. Jeska paused to strengthen her hold and drew the rift toward her in a final, killing embrace.
In the moment between Jeska’s achieving full control over the rift’s substance and her unleashing her full fury on it, the world disappeared. Jamuraa and the sea vanished under a blinding sheet of unbroken, white haze. Teferi and Jhoira were gone. Venser was gone. Their voices and bodies and minds had vanished without a trace. All that remained were she and Radha and the rift, still locked in their terrible, destructive congress.
Confused, Jeska drifted in the seemingly timeless limbo. She realized that Radha’s mind was open to her, that the barriers that kept the Keldon’s thoughts and intentions to herself had dropped away. Jeska tried to pull back, to prevent herself from becoming engaged, but the Keldon’s rage and anguish were inescapable.
Radha’s scrambled memories were as alive and intense as the experiences themselves. Jeska felt the crippling wrench that had dropped Radha to her knees when Freyalise sealed the Skyshroud rift. After eighty years as an integral part of Radha’s being, the sudden loss of the rift’s mana felt like being torn in two. Crushing waves of despair followed when nothing rose to fill the void left by Nature’s verdant force.
Get out of my mind.
Despite everything, Radha maintained enough of herself to object to sharing her past with Jeska. The brute’s tenacity deserved some respect, though Jeska admitted so grudgingly.
Stop showing me things. I’m nothing like you.
Jeska felt a chill shoot up her spine. She had shown nothing to Radha, shared nothing….Was her past on open display as well as the Keldon’s?
Then she was alone in the darkness, lying prone on a hard, stone table. Jeska felt uncomfortably cold as if her body had stopped generating its own heat. She sat upright and ran her hands across her own face. Her skin was wrong, her hair was wrong. Stunned, Jeska recognized this as one of the first mornings after she was resurrected as Phage, freshly uprooted from her Pardic home and reconnected to Otaria through the Cabal’s swamp magic.