Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [51]
“Well, it’s been over two years since I found Bant, and I haven’t planeswalked at all since then.”
“Oh. Maybe since then, they’ve—”
“What? What have you seen?”
“I … should turn in. It’s late.”
“Tell me.”
Ajani sighed. “Something is … changing, I fear,” he said. “Our worlds are related. In some sense, they’re close.”
“Hmm, no, they couldn’t be. If they were that near to each other, I would have sensed your world when I traveled here.”
“And they’re growing closer. The first time, when I went to one of the others, the world called Jund—”
“What others?”
Ajani looked at her blankly. “The other planes. There are five of them, your world, my own, and three others.”
“Five?”
“Five worlds all in a cluster, creeping toward one another, blurring their edges among one another. I believe they’re colliding, Elspeth. The five worlds: Naya, Bant, Jund, and two others are becoming one. You, as a planeswalker, must know this.”
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“I am not amused by this little game of yours.” “It’s not a game, Elspeth, I’m telling you the truth.” “I said stop it.”
“Look for yourself. If you want to lie to yourself and hide from it, that’s your right. But things are coming to pass. I don’t pretend to understand them, but I don’t think they’re going to be good. That’s why I’m in such a hurry to return. I have to get back to my—well, my family—before they occur.”
Elspeth was staring at the ground. Her breaths seemed heavier. Her mouth looked like she was whispering something, but no sound came.
“Look, if I can help in any way—”
Elspeth shook her head.
“It’s late,” Ajani said. “I should get back to my room. Thank you for all your help.”
She didn’t hear him leave. For a long while she just stared at the floor, at the intricate tiled mosaic forming symbols of castles, sunbursts, and olive trees. Then her gaze slid up the wall to the main window in the little temple, a simple round window inlaid with stained glass. The glass portrayed one of the minor angels, a Celebrant at best, rising up above a mass of impish creatures. The angel held out her hand in a calming gesture, her fingers splayed out above the creatures’ heads as they tore each other apart. She had probably seen the window hundreds of times, and each time had felt it signified a moment of peace, of the angel bringing tranquility to the battling beasts. But at that moment she saw it as a scene of hopelessness, a divine figure unable to end the machinations of war.
When she went to Ajani’s chamber to ask him about the changes he had seen, he had already gone. Stained bandages hung from an empty hammock. In the wall next to the hammock were twelve notches from a leonin’s claw.
NAYA
The planeswalk had taken a lot out of Ajani, but he had managed to end up where he wanted. He emerged in darkness, but it was a comforting darkness, a cool cave interior swept with breezes of his native Naya. It wasn’t his own lair, and he didn’t know how far he was from the den of his pride, but it would do. Drained, he slipped into a dream of a time long past.
“We Wild Nacatl need to reach out,” Jazal was saying. “Reach into the white mists that enshroud the mountains, and touch the hands and minds of the Cloud Nacatl on the other side. That mist is a blade. It divides us. It wounds us every day that we are two peoples instead of one.”
Ajani was rolling his eyes, trying to find anywhere else to look besides his brother, the droning kha. Jazal wore a headdress of vibrant jungle flowers and carried a long, double-bladed axe. Other nacatl danced around him in a circle, each holding the tail of the next.
“The nacatl were one race once, one unified tribe of cats across all of Naya. The revolutionary Marisi came and led us astray. He was wise in that he believed in the fundamental goodness of our wild hearts. But in breaking the Coil, he broke with it everything that was good about its precepts. In its teachings, our souls were purified. Our minds were fluid, full of ideas and magic. Marisi brought change, but at the price of rage. He brought revolution by way of destruction.