A dragon’s war, Part 1
(OOC: Here’s the first part of what happens to some of my characters during War of the Spark. Contains what could be minor WAR spoilers. Also, references to the characters or events that happened during past RPs with @thetalesofthereneverwood, @asmund-scion-of-ice, @northernweird and also features @simic-scientists.)
Part 2
Some days, when I don’t have any work and before discovering new worlds, I go back to Theros for a night, to observe the night. It is as beautiful -and terrifying- today as it was the first night I saw it, the day I discovered the plane. I met Theren during that first visit. The gracious movements of the scenes playing among the stars made a spectacle with no likelihood on any plane. I observed it through the night, and even now with the sun getting closer and closer to the horizon, I could still feel the emotions of those godly beings reaching up to my flame, down on a hillside. In the wilderness, nobody cares about the strange light shining on one of the hills.
Through the lights of Nyx, I suddenly noticed something. Or rather, I noticed that there had been something for the last few minutes. There was more than the stars -more than Nyx- in the sky. More than the motions and emotions of gods. There was a pull, and colors that didn’t usually appear in the sky. As its background lightened with the coming morning, Nyx slowly receded, and with it the emotions. But the colored lights didn’t, and neither did the urge to join them. I stood up to get closer to them, to follow that pull. But still it called. I pushed towards it, and before I knew it, my fire engulfed my body, and I disappeared from the world of gods and stars.
As my body birthed anew from my flames, I took in my new surroundings. Streets. Buildings. One sun. Morning. People. Lots. Ravnica. The Tenth. I took a few steps to get some of that Ravnican air going in my flames, breathing after the effort of the planeswalk. While doing so, I kept observing. Joy. Confusion. CONFIDENCE. Screams. PRIDE. Fear. Dragon statue?
I turned in direction of the flame I felt so brightly. I could barely see past the buildings, but I didn’t have to. The being’s flame was so bright that I could feel it from where I stood, half a district away. It shadowed what I felt of people around me despite the distance. From the statue, I guessed a dragon. I had felt the Firemind from afar before, but that wasn't him. Neither was it the terrifying cold fire of Asmund’s. This was someone else. I moved out of the side street I materialized in, and…
Stopped.
What was that?!
Some sort of blue skeleton passed in front of the street I was ready to exit. Not one. A group. Very ordered. In the middle were skeletons of humans, elves or something else like that, flanked by minotaurs, and… Was that a snake? I dimmed my flame as much as I dared and hid against the first door I saw. I’d almost run into the things. They don’t have a flame, or… Wait. There was something. So faint I have to look at them to see it. Those were barely alive, if even that. What had happened to Ravnica?
I was torn. I wanted to leave. Now. Whatever war was going on, it didn’t concern me, and there’s no way I’d be able to stop it, I realized as another group of skeletons passed by… And above, as I saw flying ones too. Skeleton stone - or was it a metal- wings? How does that even work? But I also had friends on the plane. Have. I hope. But I had no way of knowing where they were, and very few lived in the Tenth anyway. I wanted to believe that the entity attacking would focus on the City, and leave larger Ravnica out.
But my friends weren’t the only persons on Ravnica. Still, around me, there were fear, cries, horror, screams, grief, confusion. I centered. Calmed my inner flame along with my outer, and reduced my fear. My hand went to my sword, and I let my fire course along it, too, awakening its edge with the red tinge of warmth. I went out of my hiding, and out of the street at its other end, toward the screams. The nearest ones, at least.
Bodies lied there. Some alone. Some in groups.The skeletons were marching, relentlessly, and without paying any attention to the bodies they walked on. This street was smaller, and so was the group that people were running from. The one in the back -a minotaur- lost its head before they even noticed me, his neck sizzling after a blade cleanly tendered and cut through blue mineral and bone. Years of training focused my flame. Fear. Anger. Determination. I could see the details of everything, could feel even the embers that remained in those murderous husk -or rather, as I realized from that close, in that purple piece in their chest. Time moved slightly slower. The blade continued its motion and removed an arm and left a deep mark in the chest of the next enemy.
The things weren’t afraid. They weren’t even hurting. As they turned to face me, much, much faster than I had hoped, I still had time to finish the one I had wounded before having to dodge an assault and parry the next.
For the next minute I fought. To stay alive, at first. Then to destroy these things. I didn’t stay alone for long. The Ravnicans that had been fleeing, some of them at least, came to help me when they saw me fight back. Their weapons ranged from high-grade to improvised but anything helped. I extended my magic to them once they engaged, sharpening their movement and reflexes. Quickly, I realized that slashing the part where they kept their ember made them die as surely as dismembering them. I took down a human, fell down to avoid and impale a diving aven, pushed it to the side, rolled to the other to avoid an axe and cut down a feet before killing its owner. I pulled on someone-something- attacking me to stand back up, its attack scraping my armor and hurting like a boggart’s bite. I used the pull to lunge at another, planting my sword through its ember, while someone finished the one I’d send to the ground.
And just like that, it was over. And just starting.
The people around me cheered as I let go of my magic and breathed through everywhere at once.
“Hey, the weird!”
I looked at the man that just talked. A human man, he’d fought with just a dagger.
“Yes? I’m not a weird,” I answered.
“Doesn’t matter, does it? We need to move, we don’t know when more of these will come back, and Jed is hurt.” He pointed to another human, another fighter. He had a long gash on his side that also slashed his upper left arm. And there was a lot of blood.
“Will he be alright?”
“I don’t know, but he won’t be for long if we’re attacked again! We need to barricade ourselves somewhere until the guilds fix whatever in Maadi they did this time!”
“You’re right. Know a place?” I asked.
“There’s an old selesnya temple not far, I think it isn’t closed yet. I think we can get there.”
“Great. Go there and stay safe.”
“You aren’t coming?”
I had already chosen not to leave before, and barricading myself would have the same effect.
“Sorry, I need to try to find some people… I don’t know what happened to them.”
“I understand… What’s your name?”
“Ivegard. And yours?”
“I’m Oktev. I won’t forget you, Ivegard. Try not to die.”
“That’s the plan.”
I told them that I wanted to get to the ninth, and they told me where to go. We stayed together until our paths diverged.
I had been walking alone for a few minutes when the sky darkened. There was a flare. Toward the entity, still weighing heavily my mind. One of painful death and regret, one that I had felt too many times. It lasted one second, then disappeared.
I didn't wonder for long. What felt only seconds later I heard… No, I knew what had happened. What was happening. Bolas. Eternals. Planeswalkers. The Senate. Ah! The Senate? Did that mind mage really want me to walk through half a district in the middle of an open war, and all that to throw myself into it? I had more important to do.
Another flare. And another. I was horrified now that I knew what they meant. Another. Ano-no? This one was closer. And it seemed like Eternals had failed to finish what they'd done with others. I set out in that direction. I didn't want to be involved in this war, but if there was a way to protect planeswalkers from that experience, I could be able to stop it altogether. Where was the Senate again? Ah, seemed like I now knew the Tenth like I do the Fourth. How convenient.
Halfway to there, I had to hide to avoid another group of Eternals. Particularly now that I knew what they wanted. It seemed like this time they were more focused, saw me, and attacked. Fighting them alone hadn’t been my best idea previously, but I didn’t have a choice. I went back into my combat trance. At the periphery of my senses, I could feel the person, the planeswalker I’d felt before, and they were also fighting. But I noticed something and someone else, much, much closer. Making sure to defend myself and taking out as many of the Eternals as I could by myself, I reached out at the same time.
I’d only seen one such as them once. And it didn’t end well. I wondered where the person I was with was, right now. Probably fighting somewhere else, or headed to the Senate. That, or still in hiding. One of my strikes clipped off a horn and a wing. I managed to convince them, and I quickly retreated. The Eternals followed me, of course. But they soon found themselves on very unstable grounds, as the street raised. Only a nimble naga reached me, but to do so committed to an attack that left them exposed when I dodged it, still more aware than usual. A naga without a tail is easier to fight.
Meanwhile, the awakened street was plucking off the strangers from its paved skin. Crushing the skeletons that felt wrong to them. I hadn’t seen any of the canid-looking ones before. After calming down from my trance, and sending my gratitude to the street. Finally approaching the pained being that had somehow survived an Eternal trying to steal their spark, I could feel their pain, grief, and anger again the ever present background of the entity’s -Bolas's- own emotions, that weren't losing in intensity, quite the contrary as a matter of fact.
Turning into the street, I saw bits of the blue mineral scattered on the ground, along with some Eternals’ damaged and destroyed bodies. There was also… That can't be natural! Some sort of six-legged… Oh, right. Ravnica. The only person still moving in this street outside of me was a crouched, crying figure. They were holding a dessicated body with two of their arms, and were the source of all that sorrow and anger. Their… Ears? Were turned in my direction as soon as I entered the street. They didn't seem to be any more natural than the giant body surrounded by Eternal ones. But more importantly, their flame was the same than the interrupted flare I'd felt earlier.
I got closer to them.
“What do you want?” They lashed out, without even looking at me.
“To help, I hope? What happened?” As I talked, I broadcasted my sympathy and my own fear. It seemed to calm them down a little.
“They-They killed her again.” My next word echoed my thoughts.
“Again?”
“What? No!”
“How did she… How did they kill her? She was a planeswalker?”
“A what?
“Planeswalker. Someone who can move between worlds. The blue zombies are hunting them and doing that.”
“But she’s not...She can’t do that…”
“Are you sure?”
“I am! She… I… It… Put its hand in her chest and… It hurt her. She screamed. And then she was… She was… dead.” That sounded like what I knew that ‘harvest’ to be like. Had the Eternals been mistaken?
“You were there? Who was she?”
“I… Yes. She was my creator. Her name was Jova.” Creator? So they’d been made. Maybe why they had the same flame, too. A clone? That wouldn’t make sense.
“Jova. Understood. Those Eternals are trying to do the same thing they did to her to a lot of people. There’s more of them… An army. We need to move and find some place secure.”
“But…” They were still hurting of course. I didn’t touch anything, but sent them my fear. Taking shortcuts through mourning is never a good idea.
“Would she have wanted you to die as well?”
“She… No. She wouldn’t. She wanted me to continue.”
“Then we need to leave.”
“To the Senate?” I had assumed only planeswalkers heard the telepathic message. It made sense. But this simic creation apparently had. Either everyone did, or the Simic had managed to create a planeswalker. A terrifying perspective.
“The Senate? You heard that? No… It’s too dangerous and the meeting might be over by the time we get there. At least not until we find what happened here for the Eternals to fail like they did.”
“Where then?”
“We need some place to hide… Do you live around here?”
“We… We could go to my lab.”
“You have a lab? It’s secure?”
“Yes. And yes.”
“Then lead the way.”
They stood, and looked around, before carrying Jova’s body against a wall and lying her down gently. Still in tears, they walked down the street and I followed them, up into a building and down… Into the Undercity.
