#venser

That is why when he arrives severely injured on Keld, almost a decade after the mending, she orders her people to take care of him as they would herself, clearing a room for him to use and affording him the best healers Keld and Skyshroud could provide.

It takes him 3 days to heal enough for a coherent conversation, which is good enough for her to demand an explanation of what happened to him and what led him to Keld in the first place. The answer involved places and people she didn't know — from another plane entirely — but boiled down to Venser being unprepared for an ambush and almost getting himself killed, then not knowing where to go for help.

"So" she says, when he's done "your best plan was to seek charity from Keldons?"

"Well, it was more seeking charity from a friend, but yes" is his reply

Her answer is to snort and roll her eyes, before leaving the artificer to finish healing. Unlike him, she has a nation to wrangle together.

When he fully recovers days later, she does make sure to tell him he can come back, if he gets himself almost killed again in the future. Venser apparently takes that as a general invitation, showing up every few months to supposedly recover from his planeswalking mishaps or the miasmic atmosphere of his workshop in Urborg.

At some point the room he had first stayed him becomes HIS room, filled with random trinkets.

His stays are always short: it hadn't taken them long to realize that, no matter how much respect they might have held for one another, their personalities were just incompatible enough that they would inevitably find the other grating when interacting for long enough. Usually this would end with her calling him some variation of a "machine-obsessed coward" or him calling her a "battle-obsessed brute" and things descending into almost (or sometimes actual) violence.

So Venser would come, they annoy each other, he'd go away, rinse and repeat. One would think the constant annoyance would lead to her kicking him out for good. And yet…

One thing she is sorely lacking in her quest to rebuild her home is perspective. There is wisdom in both Keld and Skyshroud, but not the kind she needs to build a nation. Venser is the type of man who might not know everything, but who will voluntarily think and research in a way that would have her wanting to punch down a wall. Moreover, he's from Urborg, a place where people make a life out of scraps and gumption, exactly what Keld needs.

For his part, Venser seems happy to share all he knows freely, be it obtained in his workshop or on any of the many planes he keeps visiting and bringing back souvenirs from to decorate his room. As the years pass he even decides to teach her people directly, showing them how to build machines for farming and manufacturing and put to use the many scraps of phyrexian machinery that litter the land. It is the kind of knowledge that can truly change their lives, that means less people go hungry in winter, if any at all.

As for how she repays him, well…

"Training for the newest recruits will start tomorrow," she tells him one day "you should join in. My healers are tired of patching you up from your interplanar adventures."

"You want me to train… With a bunch of hotheaded Keldon kids" is his incredulous reply "You do see the problem in that, right? At best they'll laugh at me."

"You're a foreigner, they'll assume your lack of training is due to that. Also you don't look much olderthan them, which I've been meaning to ask about. What's up with that?"

"Exposure to the time rifts?" he says, shrugging. Her guess is as good as his, but it is undeniable that something is up with his aging. She is a a half-elf keldon and yet Venser doesn't look any older than her, despite the fact he should look like the human adult he actually is.

Regardless, she won't take no for an answer and the next few months see him going through all of the battle training anyone she calls a friend should have. The fact that the number of times he arrives in Keld injured drastically decreases afterwards only serve to validate her.

Things settle into a routine afterwards with her consolidating her position as "de facto" ruler of Keld ("maybe if I can sit you down long enough to write a proper legal code you can be de jure as well!") and gradually unmaking and remaking centuries of Keldon traditions into something new with Venser's help and constant planeswalking anecdotes ("Youd love Zendikar. Its like if a plane had your temperament"). Sure, they're a weird pair of friends, the keldon warlord and the ageless artificer. But she appreciates his wisdom and he's probably annoyed everyone else who'd listen to his tales.

Then one day he arrives from Urborg with a look on his face she knows means he either has a genius idea or a stupid one. The kind of look that means he's better left alone until he's thought his way through it and either decided on something or came to her for her perspective.

"Do you ever think about Karn?" he asks her, a day after arriving. "how he told us not follow him, all those years ago?"

"Not really" is her reply "I couldn't follow him even if I wanted to, why would I care?"

"But don't you ever wonder where he went? If he's still alive, even?"

She shrugs "He told us not to follow him. If he wanted help, he'd have asked for it."

"But what if he needed help? Or got himself into something he couldn't deal with?"

"Then that's on him, Venser" she says, the topic already irritating her "If I went out and told my people to not follow me, it means I don't want help. If I got myself killed that's on me, but if someone went after me when I told them not to I'd rip them a new one! Now, why are you thinking about this? We haven't thought about Karn in decades, what brought this on?"

He's quiet for a moment, before sighing and finally explaining "Some planeswalkers found me in my workshop. They want me to go with them to Mirrodin- that's Karn's plane" he explains when she gives him a questioning look "apparently it's been taken over by Phyrexians. I assume that's why Karn was so alarmed in the first place."

There's only thing to say to apossible return of Phyrexia.

"Shit."

"Yeah… They think I can help, somehow, and I got the impressioneither I go with them or get very far away to shake them off."

"Huh… Ok. So, you going?"

"Wha- Radha, if they're right, this would be like planeswalking directly to phyrexia! It would be suicide!"

"Maybe. Would be dangerous for sure. So, you're not going?"

"I don't know! If they're right, then Karn might have been caught by them. He might be dead" he says, now rubbing his temples "or he might need help, and nobody knows."

"Look, this is going nowhere" she says, thinking she might soon get a headache of her own "so Karn might be in trouble. Or maybe he's dead. You want to go and check. So go, what's the issue?"

"It's not that simple, Radha!" He replies, almost shouting.

"Yes. It. Is. What's so complex about it?!" she answers in kind.

"Not everyone is a suicidal keldon! I. Could. Die! Probably will, if I go!"

"Then make sure to die gloriously while taking down a legion of phyrexian horrors, Venser! If you want to do something, do it. If there are consequences, face them. If there's a cost, pay it. That's all there is to it. If you think Karn might need help, then sitting here complaining about it won't save him. If you think he's dead, either let it go or avenge him. End of story!"

As she ends her impromptu speech, she sees he's barely containing his anger. Good, if he punches first she might as well knock some sense into his stubborn head.

"Fine!" he finally replies "I'm going. If I come back I'll make sure to bring you the head of a negator or something. If I don't, get your bards to write a song about how I died gloriously against the ultimate enemy or whatever!" And then he's gone, planeswalking away in an instant.

It's the last time Radha sees him alive.

Radha doesn't have time to wonder about his whereabouts in the years that follow. Be it her ongoing duties as warlord or the resurgence or the Cabal, there is never a time to relax, to focus on the past. Not when people are counting on her.

Keldons learn not to mourn the ships that leave port never to return.

She does wish he would come back, of course. Particularly when she's foolishly captured by the Cabal herself. If he knew he'd probably plan some elaborate rescue just to laugh at her for getting caught in the first place.

When she is actually rescued by the Gatewatch, when she sees Karn among them, she lets herself hope just a bit. When all is done and Belzenlok is defeated and the Gatewatch leaves to handle Nicol Bolas of all things, she asks the golem about Venser.

Coming back to Keld, she takes the time for a funeral, even if there's no corpse. He might not have been born keldon, but he lived among them long enough to count, and what is more keldon than dying against the greatest of all enemies, making sure they lose their prize?

At least he was considerate enough to leave some phyrexians for her. The second phyrexian invasion comes with a wave of sleeper agents and whole new mechanical horrors, and apparently they dedicate a significant portion of their forces just for Keld. She'd be flattered if she wasn't busy unearthing sleeper agents and tearing apart ground soldiers. It takes her people weeks to find their footing and finally clear out the core of Keld and Skyshroud, which is when the enemy deploys their omenpaths, each spewing wholes armies of new enemies.

Leading them is a familiar face, if covered by layers of phyrexian butchery. Most of his body is gone, surrounded by a floating shell whose tendrils move every which way. Even as it appears to send out orders to its soldiers, the face at the center barely moves, like it is nothing more than a blank mask or decoration.

She has seen far too many familiar faces put to use by phyrexia. Their sleeper agents had sunk deep in Keld before they'd even realized something was wrong. She knows what phyrexian deception looks like.

This isn't deception. This is mockery.

Keldons do not take kindly to mockery.

The cold anger she had been holding onto since the beginning of the invasion heats up into an inferno but, for once, she does not let it down immediately. She's smarter than that: Phyrexia had fought them tooth and nail, but this is not a battle of attrition, it's an overwhelming show of force. A final act to break her and her people, in body and spirit. So she needs to throw all she has back at them.

Rather than roaring at the sky above, she closes her eyes, reaching back to the oldest lessons she had been given. The knowledge of the elves of Skyshroud, of reaching out to nature itself. She calls for the anger in Keld's mountains, and the indignation in Skyshroud's forests. Draws the mana from the leylines themselves to her. It is crude and painful, but good enough for what she needs.

When she finally lets out a war cry, it is with the power of all the earth under her feet. The mana shining so bright it is almost blinding as it spreads from her to each person standing beside her, then everyone already fighting then every non-phyrexian she can reach. As one, they charge.