Vess Manor, Stensia, Innistrad, Friday Evening (Fandom Time)

[deathsmajesty]

Jace had left, marching out into the storm. He hadn't gotten out of the gates before he'd turned back around, meek and apologetic, to be let into the manor once more and put to bed. This morning, he, still wild-eyed, and Ignis, still annoyed but determined, had left for the High City of Thraben.

She hadn't wanted Ignis to go back out in this weather, or to accompany a mad telepath to confront an insane angel, but she couldn't deny that his absence from Vess Manor was useful. Today, they were undertaking the riskiest experiment yet; the overlap of the storm and his absence too useful to ignore.

Liliana could almost see her reflection in the spectral-glass vessels where the wires led, and in the latticework of the witchbane orb on the windowsill, and in the conductive tubes that led out the window and up onto the roof. The etchings in her face were just visible through the Veil, once more covering her face. The lines in her skin matched the menacing light of the storm clouds outside. Lightning flickered appropriately.

Two demons still needed to die. But she had to make sure she wouldn't die herself when she managed to face them. The Chain Veil was a potent weapon, but potentially deadly to its wielder. If this worked, she could use the Veil safely. She could keep the artifact's power where it belonged - in her hands - without having to deal with the agenda of the millions of souls that made the Veil their final resting place.

And she could rid the Multiverse of her demonic creditors once and for all.

"Are we ready?" Liliana asked.

	The others in the tower with her had not displayed a fraction of the skill that she would have assumed, considering Olivia Voldaren's recommendation, but they would have to suffice. The geistmage, Dierk, listed items to himself in a micro-whisper as he adjusted a series of nozzles and tightened clamps on the orb. Dierk's assistant, Gared, stood at the window, his one big eye switching back and forth between the equipment and the lightning storm outside the tower. Gared held his hand on an appropriately sizable lever. "The collectors are raised, madam," the geistmage said. "And the storm is reaching its peak. But I feel obligated to point out that we'll be coursing an enormous dose of spectral energy directly into the artifact..." "You don't have to warn me," Liliana said. "...powered by the force of a lightning storm." "Yes." "While you are wearing it." "I know." "On your face."
	Liliana rolled her eyes. This was basic thaumaturgy. "The flow of geist energy through the orb will thus act as a kind of spectral antenna, shunting the object's counterassault away from the subject, sublimating the backlash as harmless atmospheric static, circumventing all repercussions and thereby allowing free utilization of the artifact." Dierk glanced at Gared and tapped his mouth with gloved fingertips. "That is the theory." "Look, Dierk," Liliana said. "I have hosted you in my manor, built you a tower, let you eat at my table, use my library, all with the expectation that I would receive some recompense for my investment. Olivia Voldaren personally recommended you because she thought you knew something about spirit inhabitation. Do you or don't you?"
	"Of course I do, madam," Dierk said, taken aback. "Then...?" "Then let us proceed." Dierk adjusted the goggles over his eyes. "I should add...this will hurt." "Pain is temporary," said Liliana, sitting back in the chair. The wires dangled from the hanging points of the Chain Veil. "Besides, we learn nothing by testing this on Gared." Gared grinned. His larger eye shuttered for a moment like a reptile's. Dierk nodded to him, and he slammed down the big lever. The witchbane orb hummed and dials flexed. Liliana could feel the links of the Veil touching the curves of her face. "It's activated," Dierk said. "Now all we have to do is wait for a proximal bolt of—" Lightning.
	Liliana's teeth clenched involuntarily as the surge came. Writhing lassos of energy bloomed on the wires leading from the roof collectors, and the spirits of the dead followed immediately. Geists shrieked through the tubes, filling the orb and the reinforced glass with electro-spectral screams. A spray of sparks puffed from the equipment, but the circuit held. A blast of howling energy looped through the Veil. Liliana could feel the weight of it lift from her cheeks slightly, its links floating against the force of gravity. She glanced at the others. Dierk had given up trying to adjust clamps and switches and pressed his back to the wall, shielding his face with his arms. Gared reached a finger out toward a thrashing curl of energy and recoiled when he touched it. Between them she could see her markings shining in the equipment, the etched diagram of her demonic contract forming a reflection-halo around her. This was when Liliana felt most beautiful—when she was about to wield a power that made others afraid. She grasped the arms of the chair and called on the power of the Veil. The backlash was immediate and total. The thousands of souls that resided in the Veil filled her with power, but the power was coupled with pain, and the pain was blinding venom. Inextricable from the magic it afforded. The geist circuit had not drawn off any of the backlash.
	Beakers popped and the collectors blew out. "I'm ending it!" Dierk said, reaching for the lever. "No," Liliana said, her voice a dagger. Dierk retracted his hand
	The room shook. Liliana grasped the chair, trying to hold the room still, trying to hold in the scream that wanted desperately to get out, trying to see anything but the pain. Pain is temporary. When she couldn't contain it anymore, she cried out. Fuses blew and the tower went dark. The spectral howling ebbed away, until Liliana only heard her own exhausted breaths. Gared struck a match and lit a lantern. The lab was a disaster zone. The equipment was ruined. Raindrops plashed on the windowsill. Liliana unclasped the Chain Veil and slid it off her head. Blood seeped from her etchings. "I mentioned the risks, madam," Dierk said. She glared at him, imagining the geistmage's skin withering away and his skeleton jawing the words I'm sorry. Instead she nodded her head toward the door. "You may see yourself out. Deliver the orb back to its owner." A boom of residual thunder was her punctuation.
	Dierk quickly collected the spent witchbane orb and a few other items into his bag and left. The echoes of his footsteps receded down the spiral stairs. Gared gently pushed aside a pile of broken glass with his foot, but did not leave. But he also did not speak, and therefore, was ignorable.
	Liliana stowed the Chain Veil in a skirt pocket. Innistrad's best and brightest hadn't been of any help. Tomes and grimoires of spectral remedies sat askew. Not even Olivia's premier geist expert had been able to tame the Veil. Liliana looked out the window at the storm that boomed over the countryside of Stensia, daubing at her skin-words with a handkerchief. In the gloom, Thraben glowed like a distant candle. She loathed relying on someone else. But it wasn't that she needed Cloak Boy, she told herself. It was merely that she needed people to need her, so she had some warm bodies to stand between her and a couple of self-important demon lords. And Jace was expendable, whereas Ignis was not and was a powerful enough telepath to possibly take on the Onakke all by himself. If only he could owe her somehow. Should she have gone with them on their fool's errand? No. She had better things to do than to go find a vampire who hated her in the very same cathedral she committed a war crime in. From downstairs came a man's scream. A snarling scuffle and a crash followed. Liliana tossed her crimson-dotted handkerchief aside and spiraled down the stairs.
	She heard and smelled them before she saw them--their guttural snarls and their slobbering, hungry whines. The reek of damp fur over the reek of blood. Werewolves. Liliana's entire throne room was overrun. And they looked—not sick, exactly, but warped, as if their flesh and bones had been putty in the hands of some unnatural mutating force. Their extremities bent in odd ways, folding and crinkling like mats of kelp. But they were still werewolves, and they still had claws. Dierk lay on the floor, his chest raked open. The contents of his bag and his ribcage were both spilled out over the floor. His face was pale, locked in a stare of surprise, and he was exhaling his last breath like a flattening balloon. The werewolves turned to Liliana, sniffing. One of them roared, and it had eyes where its tongue should be.
	A suite of spells, deadly ones, each tailored to one of the werewolves in front of her—that was what this called for. Just enough power to dispense with each one, for just enough of them to clear a path to the door of the manor. "Gared!" Liliana shouted over her shoulder as she took step by slow step towards her goal. "Get your coat." The Chain Veil did not budge from her pocket, as one by one, the closest werewolves fell and their companions paused to savage them as easily as they had Dierk. Liliana and Gared didn't bother to stay and watch, instead fleing into the storm with Dierk's corpse shambling behind them.

***
The Drownyard, Selhoff, Nephalia

Nahiri had done a great deal of work.

She had kept her vow, the one she made when standing in the dust of Bala Ged. There was still dust under her fingernails and in the deepest folds of her clothes; she had left it there as a reminder. Since leaving Zendikar, she had pushed herself, every hour of every day and long into each night, allowing her rage to fuel her. She had strained, reaching out into the Blind Eternities with fingertips that burned from the swelling aether, toiling in stone, in magics more powerful than she had ever dared to wield before, and all of it had been ten times more difficult than she remembered. But she had not once complained, not once faltered or paused to rest. And now, finally, she would be rewarded. She would see her work pay off. And so, too, would Sorin.

"As Zendikar has bled, so will Innistrad," she said, watching Gisa's zombies bring forth the last few stones necessary to complete the Drownyard. The little necromancer was quite insane - and also terribly lonely, and near desperate for a friend. Nahiri recognized both those traits: loneliness and desperation. She knew them very well, and every ounce of each could be laid at Sorin Markov's door.

The last stone was placed and Nahiri used her lithomancy, the deep understanding of stone granted to her by her Planeswalker spark, to meld it to the rest, so they were all one, seamless and pure. She needed to do nothing else, then, but wait. Innistrad itself would do the rest for her.

The angels responded first. They were beings of pure mana and so were affected the same way the plane's mana was. They fell into a frenzy, screaming, swooping, falling upon Gisa's ghouls with rabid ferocity, ripping and tearing and biting until the water was thick with dead flesh. And then--

LIGHT!

A light so bright that Nahiri had to turn her head, as a column of coruscating light shot up through the center of the Drownyard and into the sky. Black, white, red, blue, and green, the colors danced and spun around each other. Because this was not simply light, no. It was pure mana, sucked up from the plane itself.

Emrakul. Ulamog. Kozilek. World-enders. Plane-devourers. They had been bound millennia ago to Zendikar, Nahiri's plane, Nahiri's home. Zendikar had been chosen to be their prison, and in exchange for this danger and her role as eternal guardian, Nahiri had demanded an oath from her two companions that should the Eldrazi ever start to break free - no, when they should - they would return and stand with her, and protect Zendikar once more.

They had sworn. Ugin and Sorin both, had sworn.

It had taken them five thousand years. Five thousand years, but Nahiri had remained vigilant as ever, and when the Eldrazi began to stir, testing their shackles and the strength of their prison, she had called to them both.

Neither came.

And when she had wrestled the Titans back into quiescence, Nahiri had gone looking for them, her companions who had abandoned her to her vigil and ignored their oath when she begged for help. She'd looked for Sorin first; Ugin was a great dragon, ancient millennia before Sorin or Nahiri had taken breath. It had hurt when he did not respond to her call, but it did not surprise her. But Sorin--Sorin had been her mentor, her friend. She was more worried than anything, surely something must have happened to prevent him from coming to Zendikar and her aid.

So she had come to Innistrad. Found Sorin. Asked why he had not come. And did not like the answers. He'd been busy, he'd been protecting Innistrad, he owed her nothing. It hit her, then. The imprisonment of the Eldrazi had become her life's work, a constant effort that had kept her bound to her plane for almost her entire existence. But for him it had been an eyeblink—forty years of mild effort, five thousand years ago, in exchange for millennia of peace of mind. And now, with his new countermeasures, his prison of silver and his guardian angel, perhaps Innistrad wasn't in danger. Perhaps Nahiri and Zendikar and a hundred million carefully placed hedrons had served their purpose, in the mind of Sorin Markov.

They'd fought then, Planeswalker against Planeswalker. And she finally, finally had been on the brink of proving that they were finally equals, that he owed her respect--

When his angel had dropped down from the sky and joined the fray, a trained hound protecting its master. Nahiri could not stand against them both. They fought her until her back was pressed against the spire of moonsilver, the Helvault.

"For what it's worth," Sorin had said, "I never wanted this, young one."

Then Sorin raised his sword, lashed out with a beam of tarnished light, and pushed. Nahiri found herself being shoved into the silver outcropping, the surface no longer hard and cold, but yielding. Welcoming. Pulling.

Strands of eager silver had closed around her body, drawing her in. Shards of rock whirled through the air, the bedrock beneath their feet shifted at her rage, but the Helvault itself did not care, nor more did its creator.

"Damn you!" she screamed. "I trusted you!"

He loomed over her, now, the angel's wings spread behind him, and he spoke one last time before molten silver flooded her ears. He sounded almost sad. Almost.

"I never asked for your trust, child. Only your obedience."

Then the Helvault claimed her, and she vanished into a darkness vast and total.

Where she had been imprisoned for a thousand years.

And when the Helvault had broken, she'd Planeswalked back to Zendikar before even taking her first free breath. Where she'd discovered that the Titans had broken free once more, with no one there to guard them. They had rampaged over the plane, its destruction nearly total. Her people, her home... dust, the plane nearly emptied of its magic as the creatures had devoured it greedily.

World-enders. Plane-devourers.

Come!" she cried to the sky, the column of mana punching through the clouds and into the space between planes. Three seconds, four, and then the light faded, the column retracted, the seas stopped roiling, and the angels calmed. Four seconds was plenty, though. It had still poured enough mana into the Blind Eternities to act as a dinner bell for a creature that feasted upon whole planes. "Come to me. Come to Innistrad! Your time is nearly upon us!"

She felt it then: a presence.

The air became hot and still, and Nahiri breathed in deeply. Yes. She knew that scent all too well. A thrill flooded her with an intensity she hadn't felt in centuries. She ran to the edge of the bluff, her legs wheeling out of control, her mind unable to keep up with the hammering of her heart, the pounding of her feet. Tears blossomed in the corners of Nahiri 's eyes, but she swiped them away. This was not her moment to cry. "As I have wept, so will Sorin. This I swear, on the ashes of my world," she whispered. "And soon."

Just as soon as Sorin's pet angel, Avacyn, was dead.

[Liliana's section adapted from "Innistrad's Last Hope" by Doug Beyer, while Nahiri's is spliced, diced, and stitched back together from "Stone and Blood" by Kelly Digges and "Emrakul Rises" by Kimberly J. Kreines. Previous post here; next post here. NFB, NFI, OOC is wonderful, as are Liliana's choices when left alone. Warning for (as always) for length.]