Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [112]
“You’ve always brought out the best in others, Ajani,” he imagined Jazal saying. “That was always your gift.”
Ajani evoked the essence of Bolas.
Energy coursed out of Bolas’s chest like a stream of star-encrusted aether, crashing into the depression left by the maelstrom, and splashing against the rim to curve in on itself. The stream warped and distorted as a form took shape.
At first it looked like a dragon made of surreal air-distortion, suffused with an ultraviolet glow. As it continued to cohere, detail after detail resolved like a distant image coming into focus until it was a glowing, astral reflection of Bolas himself.
The two dragon-beings regarded one another, their movements curiously alike. Their mimicry infuriated one another, and they howled, a sonic mirror. The two dragons crashed into one another, grappling each other in rage. They both knew that they were the greatest threat to one another in all of Alara. They both knew each other’s power and treachery, and knew that giving an opening to the other would mean their own destruction. Magical energies pulsed out of them as each one struggled to conquer the mind and soul of the other, trying to use the other as their pawn; both of them countered the other with magic designed to prevent the psychic assault. They surged with the power of the mana storm, one in the form of scaly flesh, the other in the form of starry aether.
Ajani crawled up the slope, out of the valley of the maelstrom. He could feel the two dragon-beings’ power thunderclapping against one another, hear their claws scraping for purchase on each other’s scales. He could feel the raw potential lashing out from them, the tension rising as they fought at the center of the storm. If one of them decided to destroy the other, Ajani thought, then both of them undoubtedly would, and all of Alara would be consumed in their fury. It was up to them—the choice belonged, ultimately, to Bolas, and the nature of his soul. Ajani hurried up the slope, attained the rim of the crater, and turned back to the dragons.
The Bolases were perfectly matched—each blow was met with counterblow, each attempt to gain advantage slapped aside with perfect precision. They were one vast intelligence racing to outdo itself, one mind trying to exceed its own potential—and they were failing.
Suddenly the dragons reared back, gazed with pure hatred into one another’s eyes, and then thrust their necks forward and snapped their jaws onto one another. The streaming energy of the maelstrom enveloped the draconic ouroboros, and a flash of thunderous light overwhelmed Ajani’s senses.
There was nothing for several moments, only light and silence.
I’ve failed, thought Ajani. Alara has been destroyed.
Then, slowly, the sound of the wind returned to Ajani’s ears. The sensation of it blowing in his fur felt strange, as if he’d forgotten what it felt like to feel something so simple. Gradually, the aggressive light faded, and the world emerged before his eyes again. The crater was empty. There were no dragons, and there was no storm of mana. The valley was filled only with the wind.
Ajani sat down heavily. The breeze ruffled his coat, fine white fur newly tinted with wisps of gold. Nothing else stirred.
Ajani sat at the edge of the valley for a long time, waiting for Bolas to return and devour the rest of Alara. But he never did.
BANT
Elspeth? You called me here?”
The world of Bant was Elspeth’s paradise. She had come as a stranger, a planeswalker escaping from an unspeakable past, yet she had been