Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [62]
A sensation of panic grasped his throat, and his heart pounded—Jund was the world to which his nascent abilities had taken him the day that Jazal died. It was the last place he wanted to be again.
Just as Ajani was about to decide that it was all a terrible, terrible idea, he felt the planeswalk begin. He felt something approach him, distant and bright like a spark of fire in the darkness. It was rushing toward him, about to run him over—or was he hurtling toward it? He felt it tug on his soul, felt it draw forth tendrils of his very being. He had the sudden sensation of falling over the cliff again—terror and helplessness in the face of an onrushing, very flat, and very hard destination. He turned his head away, shrinking from the oncoming impact.
No, he thought. It is what I am. I am a planeswalker. I travel worlds. It is what I do.
He turned to the expanding blaze of existence, put his arms out to it, embraced it. Something deep inside his soul acquiesced.
His vision flooded with light as he watched Naya melt away—and in the last moments of his planeswalk, he saw the earth overturn itself. Soundlessly, trees uprooted themselves, and huge slabs of stone upended. His last impression was of lava spouting forth into the Naya sky—an impossible sight, but he saw it char the jungle trees and send up a cloud of black smoke into Naya’s sunny sky.
It must have been his own memories of Jund, he thought, overlapping with the strange sights of his planeswalk—and his own fears of his world’s destruction encroaching on his mind.
But in the fleeting moment as he stepped between worlds, he saw exactly what he had feared to see: the five worlds were one.
Naya had overlapped two other worlds, its rough, green sphere merging with the blue-and-gold heaven of Bant and the fiery hell of Jund. Beyond them, the mostly sea-covered world of Esper linked with the shadow world of Grixis. The five of them formed a kind of irregular chain. In the center, where there was once an eye between them, all five worlds had come together and had—just barely—touched. What destruction all of it was causing, he couldn’t tell. But before Ajani knew it, he was somersaulting into Jund, just as a massive stone pyramid of Naya thrust its way up through Jund’s surface below him.
So much for aiming, he thought.
The white haze over Mayael’s eyes revealed the three heads of Progenitus, twining together and forming a ghastly creature of shadow and death.
“WAR IS UPON US ALL,” the hydra’s voices boomed, vibrating with malevolence. “YOU, THE ELVES, MUST CRUSH ALL THOSE AROUND YOU. LET THE BLOOD OF THE OUTSIDERS RUN IN RIVERS.”
Mayael gasped. “My lord, that is your answer? I don’t understand!”
“WAR IS NIGH. PREPARE YOURSELVES TO INVADE THE FAR SHORES, FOR TONIGHT, THEY INVADE YOURS.”
The hydra disintegrated, bursting into a mass of black beetles. The beetles fell out of shape into a roiling heap, and began to skitter away into the white mist of Mayael’s vision.
The vision shattered. Mayael blinked, and the Whitecover Gaze disappeared, revealing the valley around her. The Relic was a solid, unmoving monolith of stone. Her attendants were all around her, supporting her. Their hands were locked onto her skin, squeezing tightly. Her gown was heavy with sweat.
She heaved a sigh, but it broke hoarsely. She coughed.
“My throat feels sore,” she said.
“You were screaming,” said one of her farseers. Her attendants relaxed their grips on her.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Please gather the warriors. The elves are going to war.” She gathered up her gown.
“War?” an attendant asked. “What did you see, Anima?”
“Horrors,” she said.
That was the last word said on Naya before it became part of Alara once again.
PART
THREE
THE MAELSTROM
As the planes collided, their lines of intersection became long frontiers of strife and ruin. Bant overlapped Esper, which thrust up into Grixis, which spilled into Jund, which blasted