#kroxa

She was a dog / they were giant

Could I make it any more obvious?

It barked a storm / she ate some gays

What more can I say?

She was a creature girl / she said to the screecher girl / "hey what if you choke on my fur"

It had a muzzled face / and an aquired taste

Oh, it’s easy, you just have to follow the cards. The story spotlights should be helpful there, since they’re the ones to tell the story! And since they all have a number at the bottom left, we can follow it to follow the story along. It’s a bit weird it’s numbered out of 254 when there’s only 4 story spotlights, but it probably means they planned out all the story beats and only carded the four most important ones!

First, Heliod gets punished. What for or by whom, the card isn’t very clear, but the mechanics tell us one thing: he has four tasks to perform and then he’s free to do whatever he wants again. The art gives us a few more indications though, reminiscent of both Weight of the Underworld and Chained to the Rocks. Weight of the Underworld’s flavor text can be of help here:

Proud Alkmenos, who would not bow to Erebos in death, is now bowed by his own hubris for all eternity.

It looks like that part is inflicted by Erebos, but notably Heliod isn’t bowed “for all eternity”, just the time to finish his tasks, his offence was probably less grave then. Maybe he didn’t formally greet Erebos with a bow at an official occasion?

As for Chained to the Rocks, it doesn’t have any flavor text, but it’s a white card that works with a mountain. The White-Red god being Iroas, it follows that Iroas would be the one to inflict this one. There seems to be two more tasks but they’re unclear. Climbing stairs and picking up his laurels from the ground? Anyway, it seems like Heliod was rude to more than one god and they punished him for it.

It’s a bit weird of a starting point for a story, but Wizards as shown with the Skyclaves they’re not against completely upending their world upon a revisit to start from a different premise, and it would make sense to introduce the new order quickly. Heliod will probably be done with his tasks by the time we reach the end of the story: four story spotlights for four tasks.

The next one is Triumphant Surge. Now, a bit less is going on here. We can see Elspeth, who’s still dead according to the flavor text, slaying a monster with a big mouth in its head and torso. She’s also using a weapon recognizable in the set as Shadowspear, which is described in its flavor text as “a weapon of darkness for a warrior of light”. Neat! Maybe it was made from the bits of the Blackblade that probably rest at Gideon’s memorial, that carried to the Underworld!

As for the monster she’s slaying, we know it has power 4 or greater, which narrows our search. The mouths are the distinctive trait of Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, who checks all the boxes: 4+ power, mouths in torso and head, even the columns around it... The overall look is a bit different, but different artists have different interpretations! The card even gains 3 life to counteract Kroxa’s loss of 3 life upon discard (or lack of it).

Now, obviously, Kroxa looks pretty big in its art, but maybe it changes sizes or Elspeth grows to giant size to fight it thanks to a boon or another.

The two titans, Uro and Kroxa, eventually escape the Underworld, as made obvious by the escape mechanic on them, but so does Elspeth, probably to go after them and kill them. But it’s not something that happens yet, as we can see with the next spotlight, so this card probably represents her trying to stop their escape in the first place. Maybe all they need is to be sent to the graveyard by her to escape and it happens right after the Triumphant Surge!

We see those same columns behind, and the sky of the Underworld, which leads me to believe this one happens right after. Now, we can see Daxos here doesn’t wear a golden mask, but we know he’s a Returned (and later a Demigod, but even then he still has the mask on his arm), so he clearly isn’t there. Which makes sense, the flavor text hints at it just being a memory. After seeing Kroxa escape, Elspeth remembers Daxos, still on the surface world, that she negotiated to bring back to life. She doesn’t know he’s a Returned (yet), so she remembers him without the mask. She realizes if the Titans are let to be free on the surface, he’s at risk alongside everyone else, so she begins her Escape to go confront the Titans.

On her way out, she’s followed (patiently, but relentlessly,) by Calix, who we don’t know much about but his card in the set tells us he’s a Green-White planeswalker, looks Nyxborn, and this card shows him walking in the Underworld. It’s unclear wether he’s dead or he just went down there. Calix, just like the Harvests of Karametra, the goddess he matches the colors of and likely the one who blessed him, has a scheduled and destined confrontation with Elspeth. He’s always depicted with thin white tendrils, and it’s obviously a reference to Atarasta, the legendary spider in the set with a white web and the flavor text:

Her webs, spun from her own hair, reach from Nyx to the mortal world and even into the Underworld.

The mystery lifts itself! Calix probably used Arasta’s webs as a guide to reach the Underworld and anchor himself there. Now why is he following Elspeth? For a “destined confrontation”. Now “confrontation” has connotations hinting at a fight, but it could also be more neutral. Elspeth is looking for a way to escape the Underworld. Calix was sent down to meet her keeping track of a web connecting it to the mortal world... That’s it! The titans already started sowing devastation on the mortal world, and Karametra sent Calix to fetch one of the greatest recent heroes of Theros, and one that already proved her ability to kill both gods and monsters, from the Underworld to try to fight them.