Liliana Vess Defiant Necromancer

Ravnica was a much better plane to do one's recovering on. For one thing, it was still intact (or, well, as intact as any plane could be that housed the Izzet, the Rakdos, the Gruul, and the Simic), which meant that they were no longer lacking in the creature comforts that a disaster-struck plane simply couldn't provide. Liliana had left Gared with a truly obscene amount of money and told him to start overseeing the repairs to the structure of Vess Manor as soon as he could find enough surviving competent craftspeople to handle them.

They had gotten some news in the intervening time; Olivia Voldaren lived and had proclaimed herself Lord of Innistrad. No one knew what had happened to Sorin, but he hadn't shown up and beheaded her with his claws for the audacity, so it was possible that the previous Lord of Innistrad hadn't survived the battle. Liliana privately assumed he'd Planeswalked elsewhere when the fighting had gotten to be too much, but Olivia certainly wasn't telling--not that Liliana had gone to confer with her 'friend' in person. Runo had also survived, or so the gossip said, though much of the Stromkirk line had been twisted by Emrakul's corruption. Piotr had been one so corrupted, and 'put down' by Thalia and her cathars in the new 'Order of Saint Traft,' whatever that was. Kristoff was said to have survived, though the same could not be said of most of his grandchildren, all of whom had been human and thus, easy prey. The Falkanraths had been similarly twisted, and rumors said there were barely a third of them remaining. The Markovs had, of course, been mostly slaughtered in their home (though Liliana now had an idea of what happened there), and while Olivia had declared herself the victor of the battle with Nahiri the Lithomancer and her army of Eldrazi spawn, a large percentage of her line had died on the battlefield as well.

It was truly a fascinating time in vampire politics right now, and if it didn't involve being on a plane where privation was a fact of life for even the most rich and powerful, Liliana would be gleefully watching as they all fought and scrabbled for power, probably with popcorn.

But since Innistrad was in such a pathetic state, they had decamped to Ravnica for a bit, where they could enjoy peace, plenty, and the pleasures of civilization. Liliana had merely had to mention the quality of healthcare she might receive at the Clinic to immediately convince Ignis that Ravnica was a much congenial locale for her recovery. And so it had been; in fact, they were even taking a stroll along the Transguild Promenade from the South Plaza towards the Gateway Plaza, where the Hall of the Guildpact - and, according to her spirit spies, the 'Headquarters of the Gatewatch' - were located.

What a crazy random happenstance.

[NFB for distance and for the paramour, please]

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.]

The soratami had already been here longer than she had intended. She had already taken on far too many risks. But this was a world entirely off its axis, and she needed to know why.

Several logical lines of inquiry had proven to be dead ends. Some had been promising, but inconclusive. Her astronomical work was near-definitive, but the cause — the first cause — still eluded her. This was a puzzle box with a thousand panels, a riddle of ten thousand lies. She had never solved anything more challenging than this.

She had also never quit before finishing her work.

( The post in which Ignis (rudely) starts to believe all Planeswalkers have brainworms )

[Taken, put into a blender, and then shaken from "Stories and Endings" by Nik Davidson. Many thanks to chef_chocobro for being an outstanding rockstar who willingly puts up with all of this nonsense, both IC and OOC. Previous post here, next post here. NFB, NFI, OOC is wonderful]

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!]

Liliana huffed a sigh looking at the sleeping form of her paramour, fondness and frustration both. "You are," she informed the tiny bat hanging from one of the canopy rails over her bed, "a most exasperating man and you will owe me a second vacation anywhere in the Multiverse that I care to claim it." She reached out and stroked a finger over his wings; Ignis twitched but didn't awaken; it was still far too early in the day for that.

Even with her original plans dashed - and hadn't that been a theme these last few weeks - in light of what she'd discovered in the book yesterday, it had become obvious that Ravnica was actually the best place she could be right now. She needed answers, she needed help, and she knew exactly where to turn to for both. And, as much as she hated to admit it, this errand was something best undertaken without her paramour's company. It was going to be a difficult enough interaction by itself, without the addition of a third person acting as an additional...complication.

"Keep an eye on him and make sure he has plenty of fruits to eat should he wake up before I have returned," Liliana told her zombie housemaid as she descended the stairs of her townhouse. "I'm heading out."

It was high time she paid a call to an old...friend. Jace Beleren, the Living Guildpact.

( The Living Guildpact and the Undying Necromancer... )
***
The pair strolled through Ravnica's fashionable Second District arm in arm. It was a warm evening, and the streets were busy.

"So what's it like?" asked Liliana. "Being the Guildpact?"

"Exhausting," said Jace. "Everyone wants a piece of you. You're pulled in ten different directions, all the time."

"Sounds terrible," said Liliana. "Four was bad enough. Hells, being pulled in any directions is more than bad enough."

"The guilds aren't my masters," said Jace. "More like...clients. I have more freedom now than I did when I was part of Tezzeret's Consortium, that's for sure."

"But you're not the king," said Liliana. "You don't make the law. You're bound by it."

He shrugged.

"I wouldn't want to be a king," he said. "But yes. It can be...confining."

"Sir!" said a round little woman holding a basket of roses. "Sir! Buy a flower for your girlfriend?"

"She's not my--" His denial came hard on the heel's Liliana's own, a sharp "I am not his."

"Say no more, sir, madam!" said the woman with a wink. "But a flower's always a fine gift for a lady."

"She's not a--" This time, Liliana didn't protest, but she did elbow him in the ribs. "Of course," said Jace. He handed the woman a zino, told her to keep the change, and presented the rose to Liliana with a flourish.

"Sir!" said the woman, already working the couple behind them. "Sir! A flower for your boyfriend there?"

Liliana took the flower delicately and stared at it. In moments, it withered and dried into a blackened husk, which she tucked into her raven hair.

"Do you ever get tired of being difficult?" he asked.

She flashed a dizzying grin. "Never."

( ...and the Unkillable Soldier )

[Adapted, spindled, and mutilated from "Catching Up," by Kelly Digges. NFI, NFB, OOC is love. Don't mind me just setting up for some future shenanigans.]