Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [0]
Behind her she heard screams, clangs, and ugly wet crunching sounds. She pressed forward, intending to buy herself some space to summon a minion to give her a little advantage. Instead the viashino let her come, and another one grabbed her leg from the tar. Rakka gritted her teeth as her skin sizzled. “All right then,” she muttered. “No time to do this fancy. Let’s just bring the pain.”
IGNITE YOUR SPARK.
DISCOVER THE PLANESWALKERS IN
THEIR ADVENTURES THROUGH THE
ENDLESS PLANES OF REALITY…
AGENTS OF ARTIFICE
by Ari Marmell
THE PURIFYING FIRE
by Laura Resnick
July 2009
ARTIFACTS CYCLE I
THE THRAN
by J. Robert King
THE BROTHERS’ WAR
by Jeff Grub
June 2009
ARTIFACTS CYCLE II
PLANESWALKER
by Lynn Abbey
BLOODLINES
by Loren L. Coleman
TIME STREAMS
by J. Robert King
September 2009
For Melanie
Whose life I’m glad to have touched
And whose touch I’m glad to have lived
PART
ONE
GRIXIS
Nicol Bolas stretched his wings, and the sounds he heard were unpleasant. Ligaments creaked, and joints popped. The membranes between his wing bones made dry sounds of friction as they stretched. For decades he had felt his age catching up to him; his age was an imposing enough figure that he felt deeply invested in eluding the arithmetic. But at least he could stretch. The chamber, deep under the Necropolis at Kederekt, was finally complete. The last of the dead soil had been scraped out from around his bulk, and the tomb had become a proper lair.
The impact of the damnable Mending had left him broken. His omnipotence was mutilated, and his mind felt like a sieve. He was truly an elderly dragon. He had fled Dominaria, hoping the Mending wouldn’t reach him—but its effects had caught up to him indeed, like thunder catches up after a crack of lightning. He had felt his power drain. He had felt the millennia of knowledge seep away. He had felt the tattered edges of his own wings for the first time.
“But if nothing else, am I not a survivor?”
“What’s that, Master?” came the response, unexpectedly.
So what if he said it aloud? “Am I not a survivor?” Bolas snarled.
His second-in-command, the unholy creature Malfegor, only stared at him. Half demon and half dragon, Malfegor had come into being centuries before under circumstances too horrible for many to contemplate. His rage at being trapped on festering Grixis was amusing—and useful as a fulcrum for Bolas’s control over him. Bolas’s web of power and influence spanned worlds and eons, a perfect prize to dangle before a demon who had once terrorized all of Alara.
“Twenty thousand years!” Bolas roared. “Never mind. Bring in the … visitors.”
“Yes, Master.”
Malfegor left the chamber. Bolas didn’t like the way his henchman’s tail twitched as he walked away. It wasn’t right for a dragon to carry himself that way. His second-in-command was an abomination. But at least he was a useful one.
When Malfegor returned, he brought with him two human beings, males dressed in robes, adults judging by their size.
One human stepped forward. It was shaking. It was probably terrified.
“Well? What’s so important?” asked Bolas.
“Master, I—I and m—my colleagues have read the signs,” said the lead human.
“Yes? And?”
“Master, I don’t know how to say this—”
“Promptly, if you value your life.”
“It’s the shards, Master. The other four worlds, and Grixis too. They’re … converging.”
That was interesting. Had one of the little rodents finally figured it out?
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’m afraid … I’m afraid they’re going to … intersect. Collide. And soon.”
Bolas’s lips pulled away from his teeth. The amusement he felt was genuine. “How soon?