MTG Salvation

Cevian’s research had hit a snag, and Gathy was nowhere to be found. Some distance into the woods, he discovered the remnants of a campfire that he didn’t expect anyone on this plane to have the capacity to make. A spit was set up over it with charred flesh cooked onto it, and it was the same—crude but competent—craftsmanship Cevian had observed in Gathy’s cave.


He knew there were voracious predators on this plane, but he hadn’t traveled to Innistrad and rescued Gathy from the cathars just to lose her here. However, even a psychic net yielded nothing. He had performed a psychic survey from the Quintess the day before, and he knew there should be a clan of ape men not too far away, but he couldn’t sense them now. Even without the Quintess’s power, he should have been able to sense something. Cevian’s brows pulled together, he took a deep breath, and he took his first step in the direction of the ape-men village.



So many days of wandering through forests didn’t suit him. The levitation spell that always kept Cevian aloft also pushed aside underbrush and kept it from touching him, but at the first sign of a clearing with enough ground space to summon his mount, Cevian conjured it in the form of a three-horned bull of a dinosaur. Though he surely wished it, there were no plane-appropriate mammalian forms for his mount to resemble. He climbed atop it and had it carry him, though it was much more challenging to ride than a horse—and that was despite the much slower speed. The largeness of the thing directly interfered with their attempted movement through the dense forest and thick underbrush.


Nonetheless, after almost sliding off only a couple times, Cevian and his conjuration approached where he expected the apes to be. If he had any tracking skills, he might have been able to find a trail from Gathy’s camp, but as it was, perhaps discovering why the apes were now evading his psychic net could reveal a way to find the werewolf girl. But when he was only a quarter-mile from the ape camp, Cevian was halted by a blue wall.


It glowed like the inside of his Quintess, but its surface shimmered as well. The phenomenon seemed to be extremely thin in width except where it intersected with objects. The trees it hit were completely coated with the blue glowing field. He tossed a rock, and it bounced off the mysterious surface as though was a stone wall. He instructed his mount forward, and it pushed its horned-and-plated head against the wall, but it couldn’t bend or break it. Cevian looked up to see the height of the wall, but the forest’s canopy blocked his view.


On the other side of the blue field, he could see the dense forest continue, though the other side was tinted heavily by the field’s coloration. As he looked beyond, contemplating the phenomenon, there was a blur of movement on the other side, and then it vanished. He looked at where the motion had occurred and hoped it would repeat so he could have a better look. And in the corner of his eye, about twenty feet off from its first performance, the blur repeated.


Cevian sent out his psychic net to sense what was causing such fast motion, but beyond the wall was a void—like an expanse of blank parchment on an otherwise beautiful painting. However, as he looked for the blur again, something caught his eye from the ground on his side of the barrier.


He put his hand out and telekinetically pulled the thing up from the underbrush. A silver box, covered in a layer of dirt and moss, slowly ripped away the bush around it through Cevian’s power and trailed its dirt and plant remnants through the air as it floated to his hand. He wiped away the remaining layer of muck from the top surface and read the word inscribed on the silver box’s lid.


It read, “CEVIAN.”




The box contained a silver umbrella. The pieces were piled up inside the box, and it took Cevian perhaps an hour to figure out their intended configuration, his only assistance being a second word inscribed in the bottom of the box: "ENTER." Both words were in the same handwriting—one that was unfamiliar to him.


But the intention was clear. With the silver umbrella assembled, Cevian was to pass through the blue wall. He didn't know what kinds of enemies he could have made on this plane without having ever visited before, but he needed to find Gathy. Even if it weren’t for her and his research, he doubted he could avoid the mystery of a psychic-proof blue force field and a mysterious silver box addressed directly to him.


One piece didn’t fit into the building of the umbrella. A single silver key was left over, and apart from its material, it was unremarkable—and as the box and the collapsible umbrella were also silver, even the key’s material was somewhat expected. Still dressed in his clothes from the visit to Innistrad, though he had doffed several of the outer layers to acclimate himself to the warmer, much-less-intolerably-cold environment of his current location, Cevian slipped the key into one of his pockets.


He unsummoned his mount, as its girth was far too wide for the umbrella to protect, and he held the silver thing above his head as he walked forward. The blue barrier broke where the umbrella’s edge penetrated the surface, as though it were dispersing the droplets of a waterfall. Air from the other side blew past Cevian through the small opening underneath the umbrella, and his ears popped. He sensed the silver contraption performing some magical function; presumably, it was not merely an expensive umbrella. It seemed to be absorbing the energy of the field and began to hum, approaching some kind of crescendo.


On the foreign side of the field, Cevian tried to pull the umbrella to him, but it was somehow stuck, floating in midair and still creating a breach in the blue energy. But the humming grew louder, and the edges of the breach started to waver. Cevian pulled his hands free of the umbrella’s handle just as the humming reached a whistle and a pop and the blue field closed in, sealing the breach and suspending the silver umbrella with one half on what was now Cevian’s side and the other half where he had been a minute before.


“Hmmm,” Cevian wondered. “Let’s hope there’s a way back,” and he walked away, continuing on through the forest. He heard a rustling in the trees and looked to discover a small, squirrel-like rodent resting on a branch. It saw him and leapt to another tree and disappeared into the canopy, moving much like the blur he had seen from the other side except much slower, and Cevian couldn't help but wonder.


He didn't have to walk much farther before he had cleared the forest. The sky was tinted bluer than normal, and Cevian looked up to realize that the field he had encountered stretched upward in a bubble. It curved up to its highest point in the center and appeared to reach the ground again about a mile away. However, the most startling discovery upon reaching the clearing was that the field where Cevian expected to find the ape community was instead dominated by a massive silver building.


The architecture was extremely simple and unlike anything he had seen before—most races took pride in the artistry of their buildings, but this appeared to be nothing but flat, blocky surfaces and corners. As he approached the building, Cevian spotted a door and moved toward it.


It was nothing more than a rectangular indentation, but Cevian saw no other indications of doorways, and this one was perfectly door-shaped. It had no other features, but he imagined there had to be a way to open it. He put his hand on the surface, and it was nothing but cold metal. He summoned mana and scanned the construct for enchantments that he could manipulate to find his way in.


Cevian discovered a very subtle mind-reading spell. His psychic prowess meant he always had a shield around his mind, but he let it wane so he could test the silver-door spell’s effect. Immediately, the door faded into nothing, and Cevian understood it. He decided he no longer wanted to enter, and the door reappeared. Changing his mind back and forth about whether he wanted to enter, Cevian caused the door to vanish and reappear multiple times.


Comfortable with his control of the doorway, Cevian entered through the door-vanished passage, and the block of silver reappeared behind him once he was inside.


He found himself in a narrow hallway. It stretched to his left and right several hundred feet at least, appearing to span the entire length of the building. The outside walls were silver, and the inside walls and floor were black, and Cevian imagined the different colorations would be useful in finding one’s way through the otherwise-featureless hallway. The hall was dimly lit by a simple illusion enchantment Cevian sensed, and he nodded silently in approval of the ergonomics of it all.


However, the hall was also tinged with a strong scent. It was sweet and reminded him of a dryad’s garden where he had stayed for several months, but the scent was altogether too strong. Cevian suddenly had the urge to attack someone, but there was no one around, and it was easy enough to suppress the instinct. He put a hand over his nose and shook his head, then took a gamble between right and left, quickly heading right down the passage, trying to find his way out of the stench.


He traveled perhaps fifty feet before coming across the first doorway on the black side of the wall. There was no door, and it simply opened into a large room. The enchantment that lit the hall did not carry over into the room, leaving it mostly dark.


“Who . . . Who’s there?” someone asked from somewhere amid the darkness.


“My name is Cevian Father,” the traveler answered. “What is this place?”


“Please . . . Can you turn on the light?”


Cevian could see nothing beyond the doorway, much less a way to light the room, but he cast an illusion spell of his own mimicking the one from the hallway. The room light with bright light, much more to Cevian’s taste than the hall’s dimness, and he could suddenly see the place. Three of the walls were black like the hallway, and the far wall was silver. Globes hung from small strands around the walls of the room, one of them right near the doorway. The side walls had rectangular indentations like the front entrance Cevian had encountered, and Cevian imaged there were rooms beyond. The two main features of the room were a desk—on which resided a massive, open book—and a thin man, crumpled in a corner in a pool of blood and shielding his eyes.


“Ach! Too bright! Please! The bulbs!” The man had blue skin and four arms, two of which were wildly gesturing toward one of the dangling orbs while the other two kept his face hidden from Cevian’s light spell.


Cevian dismissed his spell and diffidently touched the surface of the orb. His bright light spell was immediately replaced by the light of all six globes, though their light was much more faded, leaving the room full of shadows and about as bright as the hallway.


The four-armed man tried to look up at Cevian, but he was still clearing his eyes from the light of a moment before. His face was smooth and almost completely flat, his nose nothing more than a pair of nostrils. His head was equally smooth, completely hairless. It had been a long time since Cevian had seen such a creature, but he recognized him.


“ . . . A vedalken?”


“Yes, of course . . . ” The blue man rubbed the last of the irritation away and looked up. “A human!”


The vedalken tried to slide himself out of the corner, his four arms pulling him like a spider’s. But one hand slipped in the blood, and he arched over in pain, grasping at a gash in his side that appeared to be the source of the blood.


“Please . . . Don’t hurt me anymore. Just leave me be!”


Cevian had no love for vedalken, but there was clearly some sort of misunderstanding. He looked down sternly and uncompassionately. “I’m not here to hurt you. What happened here?”


“You’re not with the others?” The vedalken’s eyes widened, and the corners of his mouth rose. “Please! Can you carry me out of here then! I need to be taken to the medical facilities.”


“Carrying you would do more harm than good. I’ll go find someone more helpful. And then perhaps inform them of your situation.” Cevian turned and walked out the door and down the hallway.


“Please! Please don’t leave me!”


To be continued in The Silver Laboratory, Part 4 . . .

Gathy hadn’t been able to find the door in the cave wall. She knew she’d left it open a crack, just as Cevian advised her, but she couldn’t even be sure she’d found her way back to the right cave. But she knew Cevian would come out for her eventually, and it wasn’t as though she didn’t have several months’ experience hunting and camping out in woods—even if this place was quite different than the Ulvenwald. After she’d given up finding a hole in a rock wall that would take her to a glowing blue room, Gathy only had to spend a few hours before she had a campfire and a small rodent on a spit.


In the morning, Gathy opened one eye and found herself in quite an uncomfortable position. Her hands were tied behind her back, and the same rope kept her ankles together to her wrists. Her face was half in the dirt, and a wooden cage held her captive. She struggled to roll to one side in order to look outside the wooden bars.


Two creatures outside her cage noticed her movement and turned to face her, leering in at her like children at a wounded squirrel. They looked like men, but they were covered in fur like wolfir. But rather than look like majestic heralds of an angel, they looked ragged, their fur was black, and they were dressed in leather scraps, with colorful feathers stuck in various places. They were hunched over looking in at her, their hands on the bars and their heads bobbing and twisting, trying to survey her from every angle. Their faces were furless and looked as though they were made of black leather. Their noses were nothing but large nostrils and connected to their mouths in a kind of a muzzle that didn’t quite stick out all the way. Their dark eyes were shadowed further by brows that jutted forward, and all together, their faces seemed to show no emotion or even curiosity except that they were still dancing in front of her cage to get a look at her. They looked like burly men she’d seen outside taverns, but they were covered with even more hair and acted even more like children. One of them even reached an arm in at her as though it wanted to feel.


“Oy!” Gathy called. “If yae’re want ta touch me, yae’re gonna have ta untie me faerst.” She rolled a bit back and forth just to convey her situation, and she wondered if she should actually make an attempt to put herself into reaching distance of the man-faced creatures. The two grunted, chirped, and bleated at each other such that Gathy couldn’t imagine they were actually communicating, and they backed away from the cage and crouched down, not stopping their incessant leering.


“Come on then! How’d I get here anyway?” As she considered her own question, she noticed a dull pain in her left arm. She rolled off it and saw a hole in her sleeve through which she discovered a huge bruise that she couldn’t see the size of, as the bruise was larger than the sleeve’s hole. In the center of it, a small prick of blood that didn’t match any of her freckles caught her attention.


“Ye poisoned me!” she shouted. “How can ye poison me if ye cannae even speak waerds!”


But the child-men were no longer listening. Apparently, they had lost interest in their new toy, and the two were now playing some game that involved one of them tossing stones into lines of dirt drawn with the other’s disgustingly-hand-like feet.


Gathy rolled up onto her knees despite the discomfort of almost sitting on her hands and examined the area outside her cage. About twenty small structures littered the surrounding grassy area. Each appeared to be leather or some other fabric and was decorated with earthy-colored paints. More of the furred creatures wandered all around the area, and Gathy could embarrassingly tell that not all were males.


In one direction were heavy trees, and beyond them, a few of the tall, carrot-like trees stood up, marking where she imagined was the lake she’d seen the day before. In the opposite direction, the grass grew taller, above Gathy’s height, such that she imagined she’d become lost in it. However, several heads of strange beasts surfaced above the field. A couple of the creatures were closer than where the grass grew so high, and she could make out their shapes. They were massive, almost twice the size of cattle, and their skin was rough and dark green. They had stumps for legs and lizard heads like the ones from the lake, except these had beaks and large plates coming from their heads like a Stensia vampire’s collar. The plates were spiked at the edges, but the spikes were nothing compared to the three horns from the creatures’ foreheads.


Despite their size and apparent ability to battle, they moved slowly, taking large, clamping bites out of the tall grass. Among them, more of the furred men wandered like shepherds among massive, lizard sheep, picking small plants by their roots and collecting them in baskets.


But all of five minutes of captivity was more than enough for Gathy, and she began twisting her wrists and ankles in an attempt to wrest them free of the rope.


“Oy!” she called out, and a few of the creatures looked, but they quickly returned to their normal activities. “Oy! Let me oota here! Ye cannae just trap someone like this! Oy! Oy!” Her yelling seemed to cause almost no reaction from the creatures, as they all continued about their business, and her wriggling limbs were similarly ineffectual.


However, from one of the small, leather, conical structures—in fact, perhaps the one with the most painted decoration—emerged the most old and haggard of the creatures she’d seen. He lumbered forward with one good leg, one limp leg, and a gnarled and decorated walking stick. His fur was grayed, and while the other creatures were well-muscled, he was scrawny and saggy.


His path was straight toward her, and she watched him as he approached. Only after a few moments did Gathy realize he too was watching her as he walked, and she would have become self-conscious of her staring were she not so angered by her situation. However, there was something soothing about his presence—even at such a distance. The other creatures in the village continued their activities, apparently oblivious to the elder’s trek toward her.


After a minute of his walking, during which Gathy could do nothing but watch entranced, the elder carefully lowered himself and sat in front of the bars of her cage. He laid his gnarled stick in front of his crossed legs and reached his right arm through the bars, his hand facing palm-up.


After a moment of wondering what he was doing and just as she might have shifted from her position to struggle forward in an attempt to interact with his hand, a thin cloud of green wafted up from it, and a gust of his breath blew the green cloud toward her. Gathy’s instincts wanted her to move away from it, but some other part of her held her body still. The cloud enshrouded her head, and the scent of the green mist was pleasant but mysterious, like an exotic perfume.


And as she breathed it in, Gathy suddenly understood. The elder’s name was Secondborn of the Red-Eyed, Slayer of the Sky Lizard, and Keeper of the Hornkeeper-Tribe Magic, a name that was altogether much shorter when conveyed through scent. It could also be portrayed through three simple pictograms, which Gathy recognized as being drawn on his teepee. She also knew from his cloud that they had found her overnight in the woods only a couple miles away. A pack of featherclaws—which Gathy had never seen before but now understood to be thigh-high lizards with large, curved claws on their feet—were readying to attack her as she slept. The Hornkeeper Tribe, named for their use of the triple-horned lizards Gathy had seen near the tall grass, found her while foraging and chased off the featherclaws, but as she was unfamiliar to them, they put her to sleep with sleepsnake poison and bound her until Secondborn of the Red-Eyed, Slayer of the Sky Lizard, and Keeper of the Hornkeeper-Tribe Magic could communicate with her.


Gathy didn’t know what to say.


“I’m, uh, Gathy . . . ” she stammered. “Thank ye, I suppose.”


The elder looked consternated. He blew another cloud of green at her.


Again, Gathy breathed in, again, it smelled like an exotic perfume, and again, she understood. The most intelligent and advanced of their species communicated through magical smells, the intermediate wrote and understood pictograms, and even the simplest among them could speak sounds that conveyed basic thoughts and impulses. Though she was relatively hairless and her face was flat, Secondborn of the Red-Eyed, Slayer of the Sky Lizard, and Keeper of the Hornkeeper-Tribe Magic believed her to be akin to his kind, and he was quite disappointed that she grunted only unintelligible sounds.


Gathy shot a look of consternation right back. Here she was being insulted by a furry, half-naked, old semblance of a man who couldn’t even speak properly. But if she couldn’t make magic smells and he couldn’t understand real speech, she could at least take the middle road. She began drawing in the dirt the symbols of the elder’s name in hopes he’d smell-tell her more symbols’ meanings so they could communicate that way.


However, Gathy’s attempt was short-lived. The air around the village shimmered, and the sky darkened. At once, a glowing blue half-bubble perhaps a half-mile in diameter, its surface flowing like the waves of the sea during a storm, encapsulated the village, and—inside the bubble but still larger than the village—a massive silver building appeared. The structure didn’t glow, but it was bright still, lit by the sun and the light of the blue bubble. The largest portion of the building was almost as big as the hugest of Gavony’s hugest churches—four stories—but shorter for the lack of a steeple. The rest of the building seemed to be little more than a wall meant to surround the entire village—and it did surround it, even some measure of the tall grass—but Gathy could make out window-shaped indentations in the silver surface all across. But rather than be clear, even the windows were silver.


The Hornkeeper Tribe immediately went into a commotion. Those who were already outside ran to each other, grunting and screaming. Those who were inside their teepees emerged to view the silver building and blue bubble. The triple-horned lizards reared slightly up and began a rampage, incited by the drastic change in their surroundings and the chaos the Hornkeeper Tribe was now creating. The elder calmly looked to Gathy and to the surrounding chaos, then back. He took his stick, pulled himself up slowly, and made his way into the bustle, where Gathy knew he would do his part to quell the insanity and figure out what was going on.


Gathy backed her way to the edge of the cage and began furiously rubbing the rope that bound her ankles and wrists against a rough bar of the cage. She wondered again where in the Helvault she was, what in Avacyn’s light Cevian was up to, and whether in Griselbrand’s name he would show up to pull her out of this mess . . . or if her new, annoyingly psychic friend had stranded her. She half-wished the moon would rise just so she could tear apart her cage and wake up somewhere else.


To be continued in The Silver Laboratory, Part 3 . . .

The second story has begun on the blog and below.

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Anagathja’s eyes widened. “How’s this . . . in a tree?” She looked back to the doorway—through the side of a tree—where they’d just entered. The room was blue on all its walls, glowing slightly and otherwise featureless except for the entrance and the metal paneling and cylinder in the center of the room. However, while the tree might have fit her were it hollow, the room was perhaps four hundred square feet.


“This,” the white-bearded man answered, “is a psychic quintessence manifestation spell combined with a modified and polarity-reversed soul-trap matrix that’s powered by my . . . unique abilities. You may call it the PSYCHIMatrix for short.” The odd man slowly twirled with his arms out wide as he spoke as though he were a hunter presenting to his town a massive buck he’d slain.


“Well tha’s an awful name for a thing. Quintessential whassit?” Anagathja answered. “I’ll call it the Quintess.” In the center of the room, a mass of flesh was suspended in blue water. The whole contraption looked like something she’d heard of mad scientists brewing. She walked over, somehow drawn to the floating mass, and put her hand on the glass. Unfortunately, she recognized the flesh from her own dissections while scavenging for herself living in the woods—but this brain was much bigger.


“That’s the engine,” the man said, interrupting her reminiscing.


“’S’alive.”


“Of course it is. It has to be to perform its function.”


“An’ wha’s that?”


“The engine powers the psychic quintessence manifestation.” Anagathja stared back at him blankly. “It makes this place from nothing using its own brainpower and the needs of those around it. Look.” He pointed toward the wall opposite their entrance.


And while Anagathja didn’t know exactly what he meant, he seemed to be right, as a second door had appeared without her noticing. However, it was more than just a silver handle on a blue wall. It was a brown, wooden door, made of dark cherry wood and braced with black metal hinges. It was the front door her house from Gavony—before her parents had forced them to pack up and move out. Before . . . before she lived in the Ulvenwald.


“Go ahead, Anagathja,” the man said, “it’s your room.”


She wanted to run to her door, but she stopped and leered at the man. “How d’ya know my name . . . an’ wha’s yaers?”


He laughed. “I’m Cevian Father. And I told you: It’s a psychic matrix,” he gestured to the floating brain. “The engine does the heavy lifting, but it’s still my ship.”


With her right hand on the door, she waved her left index finger at him in reprimand. “Stay oota my head.” She turned push open the door, but then back to Cevian. “And call me Gathy.”


She threw open the door and surveyed the room. It was small, but much more accommodating than her cave. The room was a smaller version of her childhood room—the walls were the same white-painted wood and stone, and her bed was the same cozy cot, but the window was gone.


“This cannae be real!”


“My dear,” Cevian answered smiling, "imagination plus magic equals reality.”




Cevian said he could take her anywhere, but Gathy had nothing to return to in Gavony, and she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. But he said he could take her to a place with no moon, and while she couldn’t imagine somewhere the silver moon’s light couldn’t reach out, twist her flesh, and turn her into an instinct-driven, bloodthirsty monster, Gathy couldn’t refuse.


He made her wait in her room, and there wasn’t much to do there but rest. She didn’t mind, though—she hadn’t slept well in months, and it was nice being in a real bed again. Somehow, it felt even softer than the one she’d had in Gavony.


She wasn’t sure how long she slept, but when Cevian came back, he knocked politely on her door, which Gathy found to be ironic considering how invasive he seemed to be with her thoughts. She answered, and he handed her an armful of new clothes, and while she was a bit embarrassed they were uppity Thraben styles, she could hardly complain.


“Don’t worry,” he said, “No one will recognize the style where we’re going,” and she’d had to remind him to stay out of her head.


And when she turned around to decide where on her floor to plop the pile, she discovered a new cherry armoire had appeared. She opened its main cabinet, emptied her armful, and turned to thank him, but he dropped a new pair of boots with a thud and clicked the door shut just before she faced him.


However, she had more pressing matters to discuss than, “Thank you.” She dressed in a pair of her new clothes and exited to the main chamber.


“Oy! Can you have her make me an outhouse in here somewhere?” Gathy asked, making a slight nod in the direction of the floating brain. Cevian was sitting on the glowing blue floor with a plate of bread, cheese, and jerky in front of him. His mouth was half-full, and a plate of the same was on the floor near Gathy’s door.


Cevian laughed. “I could.” He chewed more and then swallowed. “But what the engine makes are only illusions. Food comes in that door,” he gestured to the door that wasn’t Gathy’s, “and it goes back out that door when it’s done. But go ahead. There’s no one outside to catch you.”


Gathy had a few months’ experience using the outdoors as an outhouse, so she only eyed him warily as she took his advice.


“Just leave the door open a crack,” Cevian warned. “There’s no handle from the outside.”


Outside, she discovered that the door was stone. Whereas before, they had been inside a tree, they were now inside the wall of a cave. She grimaced at the strangeness of it all, but the more pressing matter was finding an appropriate spot. The forest where she found herself, though, was like none she’d heard of. It was extremely humid, which it would sometimes be even in the Ulvenwald, but it was far too hot. Gathy almost immediately felt drops of both humidity and sweat forming on her forehead.


The trees and grass were different, too. The trees were much thicker in bulk, and their branches were denser with leaves that were greener than the ones in Ulvenwald or Gavony. The grass was a vibrant blue-green. She’d heard of Thraben gardens that held such beautiful grass and that were carefully tended, and so she hesitated treading on the grass before her.


Up through the trees and in the distance, she saw a huge two-tiered mountainside down the side of which cascaded a tumbling waterfall, and both the top and lower tier were decorated with lush green vegetation. She found herself wandering through the trees, no longer looking for a place to relieve herself, but exploring the strange terrain despite her now-profuse sweating.


After several minutes of tromping her new boots through small, thorned vines and dense underbrush that she imagined would have torn her legs up had it not been for Cevian’s gifts of clothing, she found her way to a break in the trees. The ground changed from dirt and plants to sand and small stones with scattered weeds and twigs. And in front of her, Gathy discovered an expansive lake. From the clearing, she had a straight view of the waterfall mountainside, but more mountains littered the horizon, and one of them was spitting up smoke like a smith’s chimney.


Tall, thin trees with long branches like the greens of a carrot surrounded the lake at varying points, and the sky was a blend of yellow and pink unlike anything Gathy had seen among the usual blues and grays of Innistrad. But floating through the lake about a small town’s distance in front of her, several massive creatures floated. Their skin and faces made them look like lizards, but from her distance, they appeared to be as large as buildings, and their necks were long like the trees around the lake.


“Where in Avacyn’s light are we?” Gathy muttered.

Time for Part 3!

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The leaves rustled with a chill breeze that warned of the coming nightfall. Cevian had met many mages in his lifetime he knew would be right at home tracking someone in the midst of a forest, but he didn’t have the same aptitude for green mana as they did. It could be useful, but it wasn’t his strong suit. But that didn’t have to mean he didn’t have ways of his own.

While a more precise version of the spell would have been necessary somewhere more crowded, a crude psychic net was all it took to discover a single humanoid a couple of miles into the woods. His tireless mount took him to the mouth of a cave outside which he dismounted and unsummoned the conjured horse.


Cevian stretch his back and flexed his buttocks. It was not his habit to ride horseback for so long. He walked silently into the cave, listening for his own footfalls and not hearing them. He nodded in approval—his slight levitation spell kept him always an inch from the ground, and in this case, it prevented leaves from crunching under his feet.


The evening’s twilight kept the cave lit as he delved deeper in, and just as the light might have dimmed completely, another light from ahead took up the task of brightening his path. The yellow of it flickered across the cave walls, and Cevian continued toward the fire.


“Hello!” he called. “Are there any werewolves home?” He continued forward and discovered the campfire crackling from within a circle of rocks. A contraption of dry, shaved sticks held aloft a roasting vermin over the fire, and a pile of dirty, ripped blankets rested nearby.


Cevian sensed something behind him and lurched back, spinning. A girl leapt from a shadowed crevice in the rock walls and almost landed on his back, but he jumped back far enough and stood with his arms out defensively, his stance keeping her at bay. She stood hunched over, peering up at him like a predator.


“That’s two close calls today,” Cevian muttered.


“Who are ye?” the girl growled. “Get out o’ here!”


“Why’s that, my dear? Because you’ll transform any minute?” Cevian asked smiling.


Her face reddened and her eyes narrowed. “Course not! I ain’t no wierwolf! Why’s everyone keep accusin’ me of it? Jus’ get oot!”


She looked young, but not nearly young enough that her tattered clothes could pass as appropriate. She wore only a jerkin, ragged and sleeveless, torn from the shoulder to her ribs, and the front was held together only loosely with a thin leather tether. Tattered remains of pants draped over her legs, serving as sort of a brown tasseled skirt. Clearly, the werewolf transformations had taken their toll on her garb, but she’d made do, and Cevian wondered how she could deny her curse while wearing such clothes.


Her hair was auburn, made redder by the firelight, and freckles speckled every inch Cevian could see of her skin. She advanced aggressively toward him, corralling him back toward the mouth of the cave, out of the firelight and toward the twilight.


Cevian walked backward away from her with his hands up. “There are others coming for you: cathars to take you to New Avabruck to force you into rehabilitation. I want to help you—to take you out of here.”


“I live here! Ye can take yaerself oot!” She forced him back to where the cave and forest met.


Cevian took the last few steps backward with his hands to his sides. The sky had darkened, but a nearby light fell over him like an inverted shadow. Its source stepped from behind the cave mouth and put his large, clawed and furred hand on the girl’s shoulder, and she jumped.


“Do not be startled,” the Wolfir said. I am Grayheart of the Church of Avacyn. We seek only to forgive and redeem you.” He turned his head to the sky and let out a howl. In the distance, another howl answered.


“Jos’ leave me alone!” the girl yelled. She tried to shake her shoulder free, but his grip was too tight.


Cevian took a step closer and leaned in, but still keeping his distance. “Girl,” he said, ignoring the wolfir, “come with me. I can take you to a place with no moon to transform you.”


“I ain’t no wierewolf!” she screamed again, shaking harder, and the wolfir had to take her in both hands.


Grayheart stood almost twice her height and picked her up like a father with his toddler. He lifted her halfway to his face as though she were light as a book, and he sniffed her, then looked at her as quizzically as his wolf face could convey. “No,” he said. “You are. Those who do not admit they are cursed cannot accept Avacyn’s light.”


The girl started shaking more, uselessly struggling to break free of the wolfir’s grip.


“Stop, Grayheart,” Cevian said. “Let me talk to her. Let her go. I can help her.”


“I cannot deny her the light of Avacyn, my friend. I must take her with me.”


Another wolfir lumbered past some trees and to a halt next to Grayheart, and Cevian could hear hoofbeats in the distance. They were answering Grayheart’s howling call of capture.


But night had fallen. The girl’s struggling hadn’t stopped, and it instead grew stronger. The leather strip binding her tunic came loose as her body expanded, now covered in black fur. The scraps that had been her skirt seemed to shrink as her legs grew longer and thicker with lupine musculature. Grayheart tried to keep her aloft, and the other wolfir moved into to help, but she clawed at them and dropped to the floor. Some of the light from Grayheart’s chest dimmed, replaced by a bloody gash.


Three wolf creatures now stood where there had been two, and Cevian marveled at their distinctness. The girl who was now a werewolf was slightly shorter than the wolfir, but only because she was on all fours, and her back arched like a bridge as she glared at the other two and growled. Her fur was dark and might have camouflaged her in the shadowed forest but for the stark contrast of the glowing wolfir. Their faces were calm and emotionless while hers was gnarled with rage and her mouth frothed.


She leapt forward, clawing at both of them with all four appendages. They caught her in the air and threw her to the ground, but she twisted and used the same movement to leap back up toward them with her fangs toward one’s throat. Blood dripped from his neck, but Grayheart ripped her away from him, hurling her into a tree, leaving long claw marks on the already-injured wolfir’s arms from where the werewolf girl held on.


She whimpered as she hit the tree with a thud, but she returned to all fours and glared up at the wolfir again, walking slowly to one side and watching for an opening. For their part, they glared back at her, standing in some formation of their own and preparing for her strike.


The sound of hooves reached its peak as the two armored cathars rode out from the darkness of the woods, lit by the shine of the third wolfir as he ran up behind them. The five of them stood facing off against the single werewolf, and Cevian moved in closer to her.


Cathar Richt, still mounted, drew his sword. “Good,” he said. “Time to finish this.” He gestured to the third wolfir to circle around in the woods, and the wolfir did so. The four representatives of the church moved forward slowly as a unit, not wanting to scare the werewolf and waiting for the third wolfir to be in place for it to be time to strike.


Cevian took another step forward, wiped sweat from his forehead, and rubbed his arms to quell a chill. He hated running, fighting, and the cold, and he certainly didn’t like the combination.


“I’m afraid I have to ask you to turn around now,” Cevian said.


“You’re going to want to get out of the way, traveler,” Richt answered. The unit continued its slow movement forward. Cevian sensed the third wolfir settling into place behind him.


“This is your warning,” Cevian answered with a smirk. “Let the girl go with me.”


But the cathar ignored him. He stretched his arm forward and set his horse to a trot toward the werewolf, and the others followed. The werewolf snarled and took a bite from the air in front of her, but her instincts got the best of her ferocity, and she turned to escape. The third wolfir leapt in front of her to block as the others caught up to detain her, but Cevian already had a bead on the angelic wolf and a spell half-cast.


The blue-clothed, bearded man spun, watching the girl run, and threw his left arm wide, hurling a telekinetic wave, hurling the wolfir skidding on its back through the grass and fallen leaves.


“Go after it,” Richt called out, gesturing to a couple of his companions. The fallen wolfir stood and chased the girl, and the other cathar and the injured wolfir followed. The lead cathar and Grayheart moved in close to Cevian.


“I warned you,” Cevian said. “I told her she could come with me,” he shrugged.


“Well then,” Cathar Richt said, and he dismounted. He took several steps toward Cevian. “You will have to answer to the church for your interference.”


“We only wish the best for the girl,” Grayheart said. “Avacyn will turn her curse into a blessing.”


“That’s right,” Richt nodded unconvincingly. “And we can’t have you getting in the way, but we can take you in quietly.”


The two of them flanked Cevian now, but he still had several feet to both sides. “I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, preachers. I have other places to go.”


“We’re not—” Grayheart started, but he cut his sentence short as Cevian’s clothes ripped from the growing size of his body. Brown fur and long claws sprouted, and his face turned to a snarling, drool-dripping werewolf visage.


The two backed away quickly, and Cathar Richt lifted his sword in his right hand high in front of him, looking with disbelief back and forth between Cevian and Grayheart, as though the wolfir would have an answer to what was happening. Richt lifted a pendant from around his neck and held it forward with his left hand, and Cevian sensed as the cathar began funneling white mana into the symbol. His research had informed him of the holy symbol of Avacyn in all but its shape. It would channel the angel’s might to protect the wielder from the plane’s dark forces, but it would be useless against him.


Werewolf Cevian laughed. “Don’t bother with your trinket. I told you: I have places to go.”


While the cathar’s eyes had widened at the transformation, Grayheart’s widened at the werewolf’s speech, and both stared incredulously as Cevian turned and ran off into the night-darkened forest.

And . . . here's story Part 2. You can see the blog post for it here or just go ahead and read.


“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered.

The white-bearded man rolled back his eyes only for a moment as mana drew into his mind before a small blue rift appeared in the air like a crack in a glass. In a second, the rift grew to the size of a man, but just as it might have seemed something would emerge from it, Cevian gestured with his right hand, and the distortion coalesced into the form of a horse. The blue of it dimmed, and the coloration became that of a dapple gray horse, shoed and saddled. Cevian approached and mounted it swiftly, perhaps with more lift than his jump gave him, and the conjuration whinnied.

With no apparent instruction to the horse, it nonetheless accelerated from standing to a gallop. Cevian leaned forward to the horse’s neck to let it break the cold breeze for him. Light was dimming in the sky, and an invisible gust of wind ahead kicked up a tornado of leaves that battered Cevian in the face and stuck in his hair and clothing.

He spat away dirt that a leaf had left on his lip and concentrated on the task at hand. His psychic search using the room’s engine had yielded to him knowledge of what clothes to wear, of the fact that his usual mount form was appropriate, and of where the nearest town was. He steered the dapple gray creature to the southwest, and within a minute, he cleared the woods and caught sight of farmland complete with a scarecrow and a distant barn.

Several minutes later, Cevian slowed his mount to a trot and then a walk as they approached the town’s wall. It wasn’t particularly tall, but he imaged it best to circle around to whatever main gate might exist. However, as his horse walked around the perimeter, Cevian discovered a large hole in the wall where something seemed to have shattered it, breaking through from the outside. The vertical wooden poles that comprised the wall had been splintered here, and remnants of it still rested on the ground.

“Ai, you!” A boy, perhaps fourteen, emerged from inside the broken wall. He held a piece of the broken wall—with its splintered tip as its point—as if he were wielding a weapon, and he lightly thrusted it toward Cevian. “Who goes there?”

Cevian stopped his horse. “I do. Are you the guard of this broken gate?”

“Wha’s it to you? I ain’ suppos’ ta let nobody in here ’less I recognize ’em.”

“I see you are suited to ward off all manner of creature. And what if I force my way through?”

The boy shuffled his feet. “Well, if there’s anything dangerous, I’m meant to get my pa.”

“I see. Then I shall enter here, and if you believe me to be dangerous, do fetch your pa.” With that, Cevian’s mount resumed its walk, this time toward the boy-guarded gape. The boy looked baffledly up at Cevian. “Who put a boy to guard a town anyway? Of course he couldn’t manage.”

“I can too manage! And besides, they’re all at the front gate anyway to meet the cathars.” As Cevian broke the threshold of the wall and continued, the boy seemed to follow, unsure of whether to pursue, alarm, or return to his post.

“In regard to the break-in I assume.”

“Tha’s right. The werewolf las’ night.”

“A werewolf. Good.”

“Good? What’cha mean, ‘good’?”

“Never you mind. You’d best keep guarding the wall lest anything truly dangerous arrive.”

“Ah . . . yeah. You best don’t get me in trouble, eh!” The boy turned and jogged with his pike point-first back to the break in the wall.

The buildings of the town were small, wooden, and modest, and Cevian guided his mount between a few of them and onto a dirt road that appeared to serve as the main street. It was still evening; there was perhaps another hour before night would fall. If his research about this place held up, that meant there would be that much time left before any werewolves would be out. But ahead, where Cevian observed to be the main gate, a small crowd with lit lanterns gathered.

A couple silhouettes among the crowd were also horseback, and three others were much larger than the rest. As Cevian approached, the silhouettes turned into people except for the larger ones, who were naked but for their fur, and their heads were lupine. The mounted men wore silver armor that appeared to glow as it reflected some sourceless light that seemed to emanate from the wolf men.

The rest of the humans held lanterns, and they were all talking at once. Some were facing each other, and some were facing one of the armored men, who looked stern and unimpressed. The wolf men simply stood behind the crowd, waiting patiently for the conversation to pan out.

Cevian approached the small crowd and sidled up. “So, are we all here to discuss the werewolf attack?” Cevian asked cordially. The crowd quieted and turned to face him, their faces draped with confusion.

One from among them asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m a visitor, here to—”

“How’d you get in here?” another man interrupted, and then a look of realization came across his face. “Wha’d you do ta Theodor?” He ran out and reached to grab at Cevian’s leg, but Cevian’s mount reared up and twisted, kicking its front hooves toward the man. He fell back unscathed, but a man and a woman helped him up, and he immediately moved to resume his course.

“Stop,” Cevian said sternly, holding out his left hand, and the man stopped. “Your boy is fine. I simply convinced him I was no concern.”

The man looked back to the crowd and then ran in the direction toward the break in the wall.

“Now then,” Cevian said, “let’s—”

“No,” one of the armored men interrupted. “Let’s not. The people of Gallowville don’t recognize you, and neither do I. State where you come from and what your purpose is here.” A couple of the wolf men started circling around from behind the two armored, mounted men.

Cevian sighed. “If only people would stop interrupting me. Of course, sir cathar. My name is Cevian Father. I’m a traveler, and I was traveling that forest last night before I was attacked by a werewolf. I’ve been searching for shelter and am glad to have finally found Gallowville.”

“If you’re traveling, why not sleep in warded traveler lodges? And where are your provisions?” The cathar looked suspicious.

“Well, I had to abandon them as I ran from the werewolf, of course. And the wards—”

“Why would he bother with wards?” interjected a townsfolk. “That’s the problem, Cathar Richt. We thought ourselves safe with Avacyn returned, but there’s still werewolves running ‘round our woods!”

Cevian met Cathar Richt in the eyes and nodded complicitly with the man’s presentation.

One of the wolf men had come around toward the crowd and put his right hand, furred and clawed, gently on the speaker’s shoulder. He was well-muscled and several heads taller than the man, but he spoke softly. “Avacyn’s light reaches far, but it cannot reach those who resist it. Her blessing removed my curse and allows me to spread her sanction and glory, but there were those among my former kind who resisted. We are here now to investigate the werewolf attack you have suffered, and we will return this werewolf to New Avabruck for her rehabilitation.”

“’Her,’ you say?” Cevian asked, smiling.

“We were all among a pack once,” the wolf man looked back to his wolf-people companions. “We only knew her as a werewolf, but there is one who has not been accounted for among the wolfir of the church of Avacyn.”

“I see.” Cevian’s mount took a few steps toward the wolfir, and Cevian looked the devout wolf over head to toe—and then in the eyes. “It seems my reference materials for this place are outdated,” he said, smiling wider. “Well then! Shall we let the hunt for this werewolf begin?”

The townsfolk’s murmurs began immediately, mumbling of weapons, the town’s safety, justice, Avacyn, and the wall. Some people moved toward the front gate, raising pitchforks and rusted swords, and others moved back toward their homes.

“Woah, woah,” Richt interrupted. “It’s still evening, and the moon’s still hiding. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a human before she’s transformed. We need to form small groups and stay close.”

The cathars continued work preparing for the hunt, but Cevian put his horse to a gallop and swept past the crowd, through the gate, and north into the forest, ignoring the calls for him to wait. This place was far too cold to be wasting time.

There have been seven pages but no decklist! Here is what I brewed up and have been goldfishing with.



I can't decide on the number of lands. I was leaning toward twenty to help drain your library of non-instant, non-sorcery cards, but you want to make land drops in addition to accelerating.

I also think there's room to make a few cuts for some copies of Reverberate and/or Increasing Vengeance. My next step would probably be to cut two Mystic Retrieval and the one Past in Flames for three Increasing Vengeance to see how they play out. Flashing it back might just be win-more, in which case Reverberate is better for the versatility. You can double up your own Experiments, but revealing a copy-spell effect while Experimenting is also fine for doubling up Dreadwaters.

I also kind of want to try Counterlash. You can counter an opponent's spell and drop a Boundless Realms, and if you reveal it while Experimenting, you can counter your own Farseek to play a Temporal Mastery or something that was stranded in your hand.

~ fissionessence

Hello, everyone! I just started a new blog to feature my Magic fan fiction about a character named Cevian Father. He was created to share a lot of elements with Doctor Who, but it's not meant to just rip him off. I hope to tell interesting stories with unique characters. Anyway, you can check out the blog and get more information here, but at least for the first story, I'll be posting here as well.

Okay, okay, you guys are totally right. The symbols are a mess for so many reasons. I just thought it would look cool and be neat to try out . . . but ultimately it's awful

I like the hybrid colored idea. Another option is to give them two subtypes. "Fire Rune," "Water Rune," etc. They could be referred to as subtype pairs, and it would sound good but be a little awkward rules-wise, although totally legit.

My only qualm with the colored cycle plan is that then they would have to be a five-card cycle, which means earth-fire-wind-water wouldn't work, and I was trying to go a different direction. That is, hint at some kind of pre-colored-mana ancient magic in whatever plane these runes existed.

I had this idea bouncing around for a while, but I finally went ahead and forced myself to sort out how I wanted to implement it. There's some weird stuff going on; let me know if it's too crazy









~ fissionessence

Quote from Gerrard"s Mom

Squad - When this enters the battlefield and at the beginning of your upkeep, you may choose up to two other creatures to form a squad with this. Creatures may only belong to one squad.

How many creatures do you expect to have out? Do you plan on having more than three to actual form two (or more!?) squads?

~

Well, you can't just carve things out of the rules and not replace them at all, or cards break.

My essay for number four was about the removal of the regeneration rules which cause a creature to become tapped and leave combat. Those rules could be cut without breaking, or even affecting, anything. (No, I didn't really write about purple.)

Also, maximum hand size could be cut without breaking anything [except maybe formats]. Some cards would be obsoleted, but that's about it.

Quote from Surging Chaos

Because both Mishra's Factory and Humility change a creature's P/T are applied in layer 7b, Mishra's Factory "wins" over Humility due to timestamps, and the manland is a 2/2 instead of a 1/1. It's extremely unintuitive rulings like this that judges have to explain are what make players want to yank all the hair off their heads.

But I thought you wanted to use timestamps instead of layers That proposal would have the same effect.

~

Quote from fnord

They don't want to hire someone who shows up on the first day of the internship and submits a design for a Purple Contraption which taps to start a subgame.

My purple contraption design untaps to start a subgame.

~

Quote from fnord

I wonder if anyone was courageous enough to suggest shifting some mechanic to Purple.

All 10 of my essays discuss purple. I plan on answering all of the multiple choice questions with the answer 'purple', and my world submission is called Purple World.

~ fissionessence

I just posted up the page for my block. It's called Quraza, of Steam, Spirits, and Space. Here's the link, but below is the 'sales pitch' description in case you want a 'warning' before clicking


~ fissionessence