Liliana Vess Defiant Necromancer

The purple shadowed tower through rainy glass. Streaks fire heavy with top dark falling. Emrakul cackles thought with cold loop metal...

A voice cut through the chaotic ramble, a familiar voice he was hearing for the first time. This is not going well. I will not succumb to this. I am better than this. Jace breathed evenly and slowly. Thought cohered. He tried to recall the gibberish dominating his mind just seconds ago, but it had already vanished, evanescent dew melting with the dawn. He was at the top of a long, grand spiraling staircase, white marble steps lined with ornate blue trim. The staircase was brightly lit though there was no obvious light source, and it extended down far beyond his sight.

Above was a tall and airy stone tower. Closer to ground, it looked like his sanctum back on Ravnica. Large stone table with piles of books, maps, and several...contraptions that whirred and buzzed. Bookcases stuffed with books everywhere the eye could see, and he gazed at them longingly. It didn't just look like his Ravnica apartments...it was them, except back on Ravnica there was no palatial staircase spiraling down in the middle.

And back on Ravnica there was certainly no monstrous force destroying his sanctum from above.

Hundreds of feet in the air above, Jace saw large stone blocks of the tower crumbling away, or grabbed and flung. The entire roof of the tower was already gone, revealing a darkened sky flooded with an ominous purple overcast. As Jace watched the destruction, he realized the purple overcast was not a cloud. It was a thing. A creature. The creature resolved into a gigantic purple cloud extending hundreds of wiggling tendrils. The tendrils lashed and writhed toward the tower, accompanied by flashes of lightning and deafening booms outside. The creature had a name...

Emrakul. The name sounded strange even as he said it, a word he should not know, a word he could not know. Or perhaps that was the word underneath the word... Jace paused, chagrined at how effortless losing his train of thought was. Focus. Emrakul. A...thing. An Eldrazi. The Eldrazi. Jace's mind struggled to encompass the nature of the entity. His head hurt, a dull, pounding ache that grew with each contemplation of the Eldrazi titan outside. So don't think about it. Where am I? What is this place?

More memories returned. He hadn't been in a tower. He had been in Thraben, besieged by countless hordes of Emrakul's minions. They all were. Ignis. Gideon. Tamiyo. Nissa. Chandra. Liliana. She had made a surprise appearance, leading a host of zombies to save them from the Eldrazi spawn and creatures driven mad by Emrakul. Liliana came back. She...

A low, pain-filled groan interrupted his thoughts; a noise he'd become almost distressingly familiar with over these past few days. "Ignis??"

( And so it goes. And so it ends. )

[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're done! *flops* At least with all the scripted and preplayed stuff. Speaking of, this was adapted, turned upside down and inside out, and taped back together from "The Promised End," by Ken Troop, and preplayed by the truly magnificent (and so wonderfully patient), chef_chocobro Warning for body horror, warning for length, NFI, NFB, OOC is a lovely gift. Follows this.]

Liliana had thought the storm would be the worst thing they would run into in their flight from her invaded home, but she had been wrong. The storm had eventually subsided, but the countryside of Stensia had become a twisted zoo. Liliana noted that every passerby had something reshaped about them. The bodies of roving vampires had the wrong silhouettes, always with too few of something, or too many. Anatomically improbable travelers raved prophecies of stone and sea at them as they staggered in diagonals.

Their trek had been long, lasting deep into the night - the werewolves had torn through her horses and zombies both, leaving them to walk. But now, finally, Liliana, Gared, and (haltingly) Dierk, had arrived at the monumental door.

Lurenbraum Fortress soared above them, a stark cliff with a citadel that protruded directly from the rock face. Higher up, the utilitarian architecture softened and elongated into tiers of ornate leaded windows, each one with its own floating chandelier of twinkling candles. In many of the windows, vampires peered down at them, wearing gleaming ancestral armor.

Liliana gestured for Gared to knock.

Gared gawked at the door's height. "You really know the lady of the house?" he asked.

Dierk, for his part, made a gurgling noise. The man's neck was broken, so his head rested at a weird angle and his throat looked lumpy. But at least his legs had gotten him here, and at least his arms had been capable of carrying the spent witchbane orb. Gared's long coat was strapped tight around Dierk's midsection, doing its best to hold the remainder of the dead man's insides in. Liliana raised her hand slightly, and Dierk squared his shoulders, but his head still dangled to one side. The desiccated tongue wouldn't stay completely inside his mouth, contributing to the gurgle. Liliana shrugged.

"I make it my business to know those who wield power," Liliana said. "As does she."

( Gared banged on the door and stood back. )

[Taken and only minimally adapted from "Innistrad's Last Hope" by Doug Beyer. Follows this. NFB, NFI, OOC is wonderful!]

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.

( What could possibly go wrong? )

***
( And elsewhere in Innistrad... )

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.]

While Ignis and Jace followed the trail of odd stone outcroppings, people all over Innistrad were dealing with the madness infecting the plane - and sometimes giving into it themselves.



It was time. Time to pray.

Dear Archangel Avacyn. Mother told me that if I get scared, I should pray. I'm scared now.

( Maeli cowered, alone )

[Adapted with some minor, if important, edits from "Emrakul Rises" by Kimberly J. Kreines. NFB, NFI, Maeli's saga starts here, continues here, and ends...here.]

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!]

Thalia was the Guardian of Thraben, yes, but it was the surrounding countryside that needed her help the most. And so, against the will and wishes of the Lunarch Council, she and a handpicked group of Cathars were riding around Gavony, attempting to fight back this wave of twisted evil. The Lunarch Council might have forgotten that Avacyn's faithful - if anybody could be called that anymore, as the human casualties from Avacyn's murderous rampage continued to grow - weren't limited to those within the bounds of the Bright City, but Thalia certainly hadn't. And she had found enough similarly-minded cathars who believed in that strongly enough to risk life, limb, and their standing within the Church to accompany her when she'd ridden out of the rebuilt gates to begin her patrols.

At first, they had fought against vampires and werewolves and - worse yet - maddened angels, but as their time outside of Thraben's walls continued, their steel and moon-blessed silver was more frequently turned to fighting corrupted nightmare creatures that defied sanity and sense and yet existed anyway. Their numbers had swelled over the last few weeks, going from the occasional monstrosity terrorizing travelers to a flood of them, trying to tear their way into homes and eventually, even towns.

And now they were numerous enough to threaten whole cities.

( Here there be violence and body horror )

[Heavily edited and adapted (and twisted and changed) from "Saint Traft and the Flight of Nightmares" by James Wyatt. NFI, NFB. Warning: death of an NPC]

Macher paced the cloistered courtyard in the inner sanctum of the church, an acid unease gnawing his stomach. The courtyard was normally a place of serene comfort for him. A lush, beautiful garden where he could retreat away from the world's horrors and pain, especially in the cool dark night when no other priest walked its paths.

But when the pain was inside the soul, no place offered succor.

( What is a god to a nonbeliever? )

Even through his fear and closed eyes, he could sense a luminescence drawing close. A chill shook his spine and he screamed. The scream subsided, and he heard a whispered "Soon," as a light, feathery touch brushed his face. A flapping of wings, and the luminescence vanished. It was a long time before he opened his eyes. He lay there huddled through the night, cloaked in terrifying certainty about the nature of his god.

[Taken, unedited, from "A Gaze Blank and Pitiless," by Ken Troop. (First section of that here.) NFI, NFB. Look, this is just what Innistrad is like sometimes, okay?]

Liliana Vess waded into the teeming streets of Ravnica's elegant Second District. She strode through the crowd, which parted like water around her. She adjusted the top of one long glove, and the croak of a nearby raven just barely touched her awareness over the din of the crowds—the crowd of people in the city and the crowd of spirits pressing at her thoughts.

Did Jace hear them? she wondered. It was hard to imagine that he hadn't, even with whatever Nicol Bolas had done to protect her mind from his telepathy. The Onakke spirits were a constant hubbub in her mind, and Jace's telepathic abilities had surely picked up on the noise. But he'd given no indication that he had discerned their presence, or indeed that he had any idea what the Chain Veil was doing to her.

( Do I have any idea what this thing is doing to me? )

Liliana felt a trickle run down her shoulder. Looking down at her skin, she saw blood welling up in all the places where the purplish lines of her demonic contract were fading from view. Just tiny pinpricks of crimson—but then, she had barely tapped the full power of the Chain Veil.

She sat down on the edge of the fountain to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. It was true - she was trapped. If she continued using the Chain Veil like this, it might drain the life out of her by the time she killed her two remaining demons. If she tried to face her demons without the power of the Chain Veil, they would tear her apart.

"I don't need help," she said aloud. "Let Jace go solve Gideon's puzzle. I'll solve my own."

She stood up, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her stomach lurched a bit as she pulled open a door between worlds. It was ridiculous, using so much power to 'walk to one plane and then immediately back to her townhouse, but she'd had more than enough of Ravnica's night air and no rentable conveyance would stop for her, bloody and covered in feathers.

Just as she stepped through, she heard the mocking cry of a raven at her back.

[Adapted, broken, and then put back together with tape and silly putty from "An Unkindness of Ravens" by James Wyatt. NFB for off-island shenanigans, NFI, OOC is love. Still just setting up for future shenanigans. Comes after this]

The world erupted into black smoke, tendrils wrapping around her until all that remained was an inky curtain of shimmering darkness. With a single hand, she brushed the curtain aside and took a step into the Blind Eternities. The tides of creation washed over her, tugging at her gown, trying to drag her under. With the experience of centuries under her belt she did not fall, but leaned without apprehension into the winds that blew from nothingness, spreading tiny particles of probability in their wake. She trod upon the surface of memory, climbed the slopes of tomorrows that had already passed. Toxic colors circled hungrily about her, winging their way through clouds of song, but they did not disturb her trek. Before her arrival and after her passing, they knew nothing but hue and hunger, wind and want, but for the endless moments she trod above them, they knew fear.

( And so begins a totally normal day wherein everything is fine and no I told you so's will be warranted )

"I think the time has come for me to take my leave," Liliana said, tossing the flowers away. "Enjoy the company of your celebrants, hero. I have other matters to attend to." A flicker of magic - really almost all she had left, she was perilously close to the end of her stamina - and several zombies appeared from the Blind Eternities behind her. They started gathering the large chunk of stones with the runes still engraved on them and then began stumbling after her. "My agendas lie elsewhere."

Like in a creepy, slowly being refurbished mansion in the woods where someone was likely impatiently waiting for her. A lesser woman would already be shying away from the...commentary...he would almost certainly have for her when she returned. She was not doing that, of course. Her internal wincing was for something else.

"You're taking fragments of the spires. Hoping to uncover more secrets?" Sorin asked. "More mysteries?"

"And why not?" she tossed over her shoulder. "Do I not deserve a few souvenirs?" She continued on her way out of town, leaving Sorin without another word, her phone in her hand as she dialed up a portal back to the island. She did glance back once and then quickly away. She didn't like the look in his eye. He looked...hungry.

Once the necromancer was out of sight, Sorin grabbed one of the dwarves by the collar and lifted him up. A moment later, his teeth sinking deep into the exposed throat, ignoring the thrashing, and drinking until the dwarf was empty. He tossed the body down to the ground and snorted. "Liliana Vess. Sorin Markov. 'Heroes'." He scrubbed the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. "Pitiful."

And then he was gone.

[Description of the trek through the Blind Eternities adapted from Agents of Artifice by Ari Marmell and the rest from "Grave Secrets" in Planeswalkers: Notorious #1, written by Cullen Bunn and art by French Carlomagno. Very long, as they tend be! NFI and NFB for off-island shenanigans, but OOC welcome!]

As Ignis went to meet up with Prompto and Gladio, Liliana strolled through the chaotic streets of Thraben, unconcerned for the panic and violence erupting all around her. What was it to her? She was probably the safest person in the city right now; the fires were all confined to the outer ring of the city where the vast majority of the fighting was. Cathars and soldiers took no notice of her as they raced towards the zombie hordes at the gate or struggled to quell the hysteria of the population. The thieves and looters looking to take advantage of the pandemonium were more interested in ducking out of sight as she sauntered by than in harassing her. And the stray zombie that clawed its way out of a tunnel or climbed out of a sewer?

Darling, don't make her laugh.

"Shoo." A whispered word, an idle gesture, and the ghouls bowed to her power, obediently finding someone else to pester.

Sure, she planned to take over the majority of the advanced party of zombies if she ran into this unknown necromancer controlling them, but she wasn't going to waste the on playing tug-of-war with them over a few stragglers. That would play her hand too early, and besides. The Church soldiers should at least be capable killing a single zombie. If they couldn't, the Avacynian Church was in deeper trouble than just their missing angel could fix.

Ah. There was the Cathedral now, its gates open and practically welcoming her inside. Liliana smirked, remembering the angel's - Kelse - insistence from that afternoon - You'll never set foot on this holy ground, death mage! "That interdiction didn't last long, did it?" she asked the air, daintily holding up her skirts as she swept onto the Cathedral's grounds.

( Now to find Mikaeus. )

***
Gisa,

I never should have included you in my venture. You and your maggot bags ruined everything once again. But I forgive you because I met someone special! A most delightful girl by the name of Lili. She was lingering outside the cathedral like a lost little puppy, her long black hair lit by the sparks from the burning city. I most happily agreed to take her under my wing.

Let the world gloat about how I lost Thraben. Let them crow about how the lunarch will dwell happily in eternal rest, snug in the Blessed Sleep. My dear Lili has taken an unusual interest in our now-dead Mikaeus. She promised me that eternity isn't such a long time after all. She must has stepped out for a minute, but I have much to tell her when she returns.

Geralf

***
( 'Stop complaining. You can rest when you're dead--Oops. Sorry.' )
Once again, Liliana strolled through violence and chaos, though this time she was the focus of it, not immune. Priests and cathars and lower ranking soldiers tried to fling themselves at her. She supposed she could have been a little less obvious about having the zombified lunarch following at her heels, but not doing so was a tactical decision, even if she was getting some satisfaction out of it, too. One of the first guards they'd run into had been that obnoxious angel from the front gate, oh the expression on her face when she'd realized who Liliana was and what she'd done. And now she, too, was part of Liliana's ever-growing escort to the Cathedral courtyard. Most of the soldiers she was content with simply raising back up mindless and obedient, but Kelse she had brought back the same way she'd brought Mikaeus.

( Liliana REALLY didn't like angels. )

[NFI, NFB, OOC welcome. I stole many bits and pieces for this bit, including the text of Geralf's letter to Gisa from Preview Article: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed by Jenna Helland, a bunch of different flavor text from various Liliana magic cards, and also translated several of her specific Planeswalker abilities into descriptions because of who I am as a person. Warning for really fuckin' long! Preceded by this post and this post and continues here]