Liliana Vess Defiant Necromancer

After leaving the cathedral, Jace had Planeswalked away, babbling about the Gatewatch, the group he'd formed with three other Planeswalkers while defeating two Eldrazi Titans on a plane named Zendikar. He promised to return by morning and with the six of them together, they stood a chance of defeating Emrakul. It would have been better with seven, but Sorin had vanished. The vampire had made clear he had other priorities and they would receive no help from that quarter. Sigarda also departed; she had promised her assistance to Thalia, protecting the innocent from the madness overtaking all of Innistrad.

But nowhere was it worse than right here in Thraben. The misshapen werewolves and other creatures that had been rampaging through the countryside had been caused by the barest touch of Emrakul's influence on the plane, what little had been able to permeate past the barrier that had been Avacyn. Now that the great Titan was here, her full corrupting effect had been unleashed onto the populace and the High City had transformed into a nightmare. Tamiyo and Ignis had caught a few hours sleep in the cellar of the cathedral, exhausted by the battle against the maddened angel and her twisted abomination of a sister. But as they made their way to the outskirts of the city to the planned meeting point, they learned the extent of the horrific changes the Titan of Corruption had wrought as she'd made her way from Nephalia to Gavony, slow but relentless.

( Initial Plans )

***
"Look at it, Gared. Pretty, in a way. Your world is ending." Liliana watched as Thraben burned and tentacles reached down from the storms to rake the earth below. The sky swarmed with angels, and the ground beneath the titan just swarmed. From this distance, she could make out only the movement, an unending, writhing mass of creatures, pressing as close to the source of the world's end as they could.

"Yes, mistress. S'what it does around here, mostly." The geistmage's apprentice, with his bulging eye, looked forlornly down at the chaos.

"Ah, there they are. See the fire and the flashes of light? Jace must have gone to fetch his little friends. Looks like they're headed straight toward the center of it all." Because of course they were. And she had no doubt Ignis was right there with them.

Gared tilted his head, an interesting effect atop his already asymmetrical body. "Yes, mistress. I couldn't help but notice, you've raised this lovely little army to help, but we're staying up here, and the others are down there."

There was nothing little about her army. Undead spread out behind her nearly to the horizon. "Hmm. I suppose that's true. Well then, shall we go make an entrance?"

***
( Rarely Survive Contact With The Enemy )

[Mulched, composted, and grown from "Battle of Thraben" by Nik Davidson. Finally, Liliana gets to march an army of zombies on Thraben. Enrichment for necromancers. Played with the peerless chef_chocobo. NFI, NFB, follows this.]

Stensia, Morning
Since leaving Markov Manor, Jace had been consumed by the journal: what it said, what questions it asked, what answers it gave. Both men had agreed that clearly something greater was at work here - after all, they'd found the journal in Markov Manor, which had been destroyed by some as yet unknown force, and the journal discussed many of the weird issues plaguing Innistrad currently: the madness of angels, the monstrousness of werewolves, the twisting transformation of villagers...and sometimes their villages as well. It seemed like each step across Innistrad they took, they found evidence of some new fresh horror at work, and they'd barely been at this for a full twenty-four hours.

Fortunately for them both, he'd been released from the tense delusions of Markov Manor; his composure and thoughts had cleared. He was fully back in the land of the sane once more.

Jace knew that Ignis was impatiently waiting for him to pack up the journal so they could continue their trek, but he couldn't help but linger over their breakfast at the inn they'd overnighted in. But how could he go on, when there were so many fascinating noted to uncover within? Intricate field drawings filled the pages in front of him. An angel's wing—each feather described in painstakingly detailed line work. A gridded table of field drawings of delicately shaded circles under the boxed heading "Material Composition of the Heron Moon." A full-page image of a part-man, part-wolf, depicted in profile. This journal was as much art as it was scholarship.

( Entry 433, Harvest Moon )

Okay, maybe that was enough reading for the morning. With a hard swallow of the last of his coffea, Jace tucked the journal into his belt and went to see if Ignis was getting anywhere in negotiations to rent some kind of conveyance.

***
Stensia, Afternoon
Their horses didn't like the marshes. At first, Jace thought it was just that they didn't like the dampness, the uneven footing, the chill mist that seemed to find every gap in clothing. But as they continued, it became obvious that it wasn't the marsh specifically that they were leery of, but something within it. Finally, right after noon, the mists thinned a bit and they found themselves looking at a twisting monolith. It was approximately his height, the foundation formed from raw stone pulled from the earth that quickly turned to a hard-edged, twisting shape. Staring down the axis of its tip, Jace noted that the formation pointed to another just like it a couple hundred meters away. It in turn pointed to another, and another, until they disappeared from view in the distance. Looking closely, Jace saw that the very trees themselves had begun growing in the direction of the monoliths.

"Ignis! Ignis, look at that! This monolith is unmistakably the same as those we saw at Markov Manor, and I'm certain I saw the exact same image here the journal!" He missed Ignis' reply, barely even noticing the tone it was delivered in (a scathing drawl), because he was quickly diving back into the text. "And you, our paper companion, what did you know about this?" He eagerly thumbed through the pages to the image of the same twisted stones that he remembered glancing over the night before, when he was still puzzling over the Kamigawan script. An entry followed:

( Entry 643, Hunter's Moon )

The moor was silent, save for a rising buzz of swamp insects and the restive movement of their horses. Ignis was asking him something or other, tone a bit concerned now, but Jace didn't answer. He had more reading to do.

***
Kessig, Evening
They had followed the stones - cryptoliths, the journal had called them, all the way from Stensia to the border of Gavony, but then had turned and ridden south towards Kessig to see if the lines of stones could be found there, too.

Indeed they were, all uniform in height and size, equidistant apart.

As our colleagues in Kessig had seen the renewed savagery of lycanthropes, here in Nephalia we too have recorded signs of the moon's unease (see Table 6-32). The oceans themselves have risen to record high tides in addition to a change in their direction—

Jace pored over the charts on the previous page's ledger with a critical editorial eye that would have made Lavinia proud, had she seen him do so more than a handful of times as the Guildpact.

—despite experiments performed in triplicate, far exceeding tolerances for measurement error. The gravitational force governing the movement of the tides appears to have shifted from the moon itself to a location very close to the sea—

"Wait a second. Hang on," Jace said indignantly to the handwritten pages. "I've seen Kiora move the entire Halimar Sea. Or at least try to. And...and even if it was something that could move the tides, it would have to be huge. There's no way such a thing could have gone unnoticed!" He gave the book a cautionary glare, as if warning it to not turn tricky on him.

Each of my studies seems to blossom into more inquiries. For every answer, three questions...

More questions, endless questions.

More clues, still with no answers. Jace clenched and unclenched his fists, filled with nervous energy. The evidence was infuriating - nothing to hear, grasp, or know on his own. Even his own eyes seemed useless. He had no choice but to let the journal lead him along.

"Why aren't you here, in person? I have so many questions..." Jace gave a longing sigh toward the journal. Silence. "Of course. Wishful thinking."

The text of the pages stared back at him, defying him to reread their final words. "I know, I know. We've found a trail in the stones, I'll—-er, we'll follow it." He gave a guilty glance to Ignis; he had spent more of the day talking to the journal than he had his flesh-and-blood companion. "I just...I wish I knew better what we were looking for? Trail or trap, what have you left me here?"

Either way, they'd find it in Nephalia.

[Once more into the breach, dear friends! This post spliced, diced, and julienned from "The Drownyard Temple" by Mel Li. Ignis modded with permission from the wonderfully game and always enthusiastic chef_chocobro. Warning for length, because of course there is, I'm adapting very long "short" fictions, okay? NFI, NFB, OOC is cherished. Follows the events of this post. Also, warning for gore/body horror under the Entry 433, Harvest Moon cut!]

A storm is coming, Sigarda thought. Lightning flashed in the dark gray sky, but no thunder ever came. It was unusual to see a storm in the middle of the cold winter, the season dominated by the hunter's moon. The air had hung heavy for days, the gray clouds unmoving, and now there was lightning without thunder, a storm without rain. Sigarda looked out over large swaths of the forest and was uneasy.

She hovered in her personal solar, the bare stone walls and four thick buttresses in sharp contrast to the open vistas of dark green forests sprinkled with patches of white snow. Sigarda could see for miles in every direction and often spent long stretches here when seeking quiet contemplation. The solar was at the top of a long-abandoned tower in a Kessig forest, a tower built centuries ago when humans had been more ambitious.

They had become ambitious again. Avacyn's return had ushered in a new era of peace and tranquility. Humans had been spreading out across the land again, building new homes and farms and towns. But in the last several weeks, troubling reports had sprung up across the land. Uprisings and disappearances and slaughters. A shadow had risen over the world, and Sigarda wanted to know why.

A lightning flash lit the dark sky, and another, and in between the flashes of lightning she felt her sisters' approach, and moments later they landed in her sanctuary.

( A most gracious invitation )

Sigarda stood in her ruined solar, watching the lightning dance amongst the gray skies, though still no rain fell. Tears dropped from her eyes, splashing onto the dusty stone floor. She thought about her fourth sister, the dark sister, a thousand years dead by Avacyn's command, and wondered why she hadn't fought for her, had not even tried.

The storm is coming. She considered the angels in her flight, wondering if any of them had gone over to Avacyn yet. She considered humans that could possibly help stand against Avacyn. There were few, so few. But Sigarda knew it didn't matter, even if no one joined her cause. The storm is here. This time I fight.

[Taken and slightly edited from "A Gaze Blank and Pitiless" by Ken Troop. NFI, NFB. Listen, everything is fine, nothing is terrible. Sigarda first seen here.]

There had been planning. There had been Stitching. There had been whistling and ghoul-calling and once they'd run out of the dead to plunder, the Cecani twins had moved onto to living, depopulating much of the Moorlands and leaving the town of Trostad an empty ruin.

But what was such a thing to Gisa and Geralf? They had their eyes set on a much larger prize:

The High City of Thraben, the center of the Church of Avacyn and their familial seat, from whence they'd been exiled.

( And they say you can never go home again, ha! )

Mikaeus was too old and tired, careworn and heartsore, to bother with his holy raiment and official vestments to open a damn door. Instead of a stately pace to cover his unsteady footing, he shuffled across the stone floor of his room and opened the heavy wooden door with a grunt of effort.

He didn't recognize the young man in front of him, but that was no surprise. He recognized fewer and fewer of those serving in the Great Cathedral these days. What was more concerning was that the young man was not wearing even a surplice with Avacyn's symbol on it, but they were under siege or soon to be. Ignoring propriety was understandable - was not Mikaeus himself?

"Enh?" he asked. "What is it? What news?"

"Good evening, cousin," Geralf Cecani said with a smile.

[NFI, NFB, OOC welcome. Text taken from Preview Article: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed by Jenna Helland. Content Warning: Second-hand reference to suicide. Previous post here, let's goooooo!]