Liliana Vess Defiant Necromancer

Liliana had returned to her store after her talk with Prompto in something akin to a fugue state - not unlike the same state she'd been in the first time she'd landed on Innistrad after her Spark had ignited, or the state she'd been in after the Mending had occurred and she'd felt the lion's share of her power get brutally torn away. She'd flipped the sign to Closed almost immediately and then had gone into the back room and...sat. Stared. Thoughts tumbling over themselves in a circle that even she couldn't follow.

Planar portals. This place had planar portals. They had intraplanar portals, something she hadn't ever even heard of. Prompto was just going to step through one to go get cupcakes. For his wife. And you could just order one from your phone.

She pushed herself up and exited through the store's back door, out onto the beach. Huh. It was dark. When had that happened? No matter. She walked on unsteady feet (must be the sand's fault) to the waterline and stared out into the darkness. And suddenly felt very heavy. She fell to her knees.

And screamed, a flare of purple-black magic shooting up into the sky.

The scream didn't last long, replaced by simultaneous laughter and crying. The column of light didn't last long either, turning into a writhing, twisting smoke that twined around her instead. She felt mad. She probably looked mad, but she couldn't help it. She had sold her soul for the memory of what she'd had, what she'd been, and here, the people on this maddening island just...had planar portals. The whole time. It was like finding Kayla's music box, only instead of ancient history, it was her history, a part of her that she'd lost and she missed and it was here the whole time and and and--

That must be why she was here. There was no way that Nicol Bolas had put her on a plane with access to planar portals and didn't know they existed. She was pretty certain that he didn't know how to find them or use them, but she knew in her bones how this was supposed to play out. She'd find the planar portals somehow. She'd run to tell him about them, use them as collateral to convince him to help her break her contracts. She'd be free and they'd be the only Planeswalkers in the Multiverse with access to planar portals again.

And she was tempted. By Gaea she was tempted. If she hadn't stumbled, zombie-like, back to her store and then just stared into nothingness for hours, she might have turned around and done just that in the heat of moment after learning about them. She could be free...

But then Nichol Bolas would have planar portals. And that boded ill for the entire Multiverse. To be very clear, Liliana wasn't particularly fussed about that, save for the part where she lived in the Multiverse. She didn't trust that she would emerge unscathed from whatever Bolas would do with planar portals. Grixis, she didn't trust that she would emerge unscathed from whatever Bolas would do to go from being one of the only two who knew about planar portals to being the only one.

Enlightened self-interest saved the day.

Tomorrow, she would begin thinking of how she could use the existence of planar portals for her own benefit. Tonight, though. Tonight, her heart hurt. It was a miracle and, like every miracle, it was a double-edged gift, and those edges could cut.

Planar portals. Fuck.