Journey Into Nyx (19 page)

“Are you going to teach me more forms today?” the girl begged. In one hand, she clutched a blunt wooden sword
that Elspeth remembered making for her. Erebos’s ordeal came with a series of pleasant memories that Elspeth knew weren’t real but she wanted them to be.

The smell of fresh bread mingled with the sweet scent of white flowers in a ceramic vase on the wooden table. A fragrant breeze wafted through the cottage. Her son had disappeared from view, but she could see the countryside in remarkable clarity. She could see the veins on the leaves of the oak trees on the other side of the field. That was the edge of their farm. No one could come onto her land if she didn’t want them to. No one would hurt her. No storms would ever appear on the horizon. This was her home, and she was surrounded by people who loved her.

The little girl smiled happily at her mother and set her play sword down on the table. As Elspeth stared into her daughter’s green eyes, she felt her true memories slipping away from her. Daxos, Ajani, Nikka—they were vanishing into the darkness and in mere moments she would forget them altogether. And she wasn’t entirely sure that she cared. Here was everything she ever wanted. And all she had to do was let go of the pain of her real memories.

The girl began to sing a jagged little song. It was obvious that she was making it up on the spot. “Across the river … oh, down the river.” As she sang, she plucked the white flowers out of the vase and laid them in a neat row on the table. While Elspeth struggled to remember the name of the flower, her daughter began pouring clear liquid from the vase into the gold cup on the table. The gold was very out of place in the rustic surroundings, and Elspeth felt confused that she hadn’t noticed it earlier. No, it wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed it. It just hadn’t been there before.

Her daughter poured the liquid until it reached the brim of the gold cup. The liquid had no smell, but Elspeth knew it wasn’t water. Once she drank it, she was done fighting. Once she drank it, she could finally rest. Asphodel. Elspeth
remembered the name of the flower, but in doing so, a shudder of pain wracked her body. Remembering her old life was like reopening a wound. If she stayed here, emotions like grief and despair would become like strangers she had passed by long ago.

The little girl stared up at her expectantly. Every detail of her life with this child passed through her mind. From her birth to the joyful discoveries of her toddler years and even very recent days when they played together outside in the long summer evenings.

“You should drink it, Mama,” the girl said seriously. “That’s all you need to do.”

This was a vision of a home, safety, and comfort. She was so tired of the grief, of the destruction, and everything falling apart over and over again. Here was Erebos’s cup of resignation. Why should she be the one to fight Xenagos? Or the Phyrexians? Or any of the relentless evils that plagued the Multiverse? Didn’t she deserve peace? She glanced out the window at the man who would be her husband. Whoever he was, he wasn’t Daxos. Pain shot through her body as she reminded herself that none of this was real. She had not given birth to these beautiful children. There would be no finding rest here.

“Please, Mama?” the girl begged.

Elspeth snatched the gold cup and threw it against the wall. On impact, the gold shattered into a thousand worthless shards. Like everything else about the vision, Erebos’s cup was a bitter lie. Tears ran down the little girl’s cheeks, and Elspeth felt the regret as acutely as if it had been her real daughter she was abandoning.

“Why?” the girl asked pitifully. “Why did you do that?”

“Because no one ever promised me a life without suffering,” Elspeth said.

And with those words, she was ripped back to Nyx.

E
lspeth!” Ajani shouted, but he sounded far away. “Open your eyes!”

She blinked rapidly as her vision spun into focus. Above her, impossible formations of interstellar clouds seemed frozen against the infinite black of the starless cosmos. Burning white comets streaked across the sky. There were no echoes, no wind, and no scent of life. The pastoral scene from Erebos’s ordeal was gone, but so was the shrine on the periphery of Nyx.

They now stood on a precipice of black marble jutting into the blackness that had replaced the vibrant night sky. The black stone beneath their feet was partially transparent, and stars glittered and astral clouds swirled inside its depth. The “floor” of Nyx was stellar components made corporeal. Such features were unperceivable from the mortal realm where Nyx appeared boundless and unfathomable. But what appeared to be an ethereal creature to a human’s eye actually had form in the realm of the gods. A celestial creature could stand here, lift a weapon, and commit violence upon another.

Xenagos’s void lay directly in front of them. Elspeth had imagined it as an impassible gulf that the Satyr-God had created to protect himself inside of Nyx. From the mortal realm, it had looked as wide as the ocean. But standing at its edge, the gap was much narrower than Elspeth expected.
And it wasn’t a moat of nothingness—it was still Nyx, just without the presence of god-forms, celestial creatures, or a multitude of stars. It was like someone had taken a cloth and scrubbed Nyx bare.

On the far side of the gulf, there was another plain of jagged black marble where a wall of fire burned across the glittering stone. At least fifty feet high, the flame wall was curved on both the east and west edges as if it continued in an unbroken circle, which could not be seen from their vantage point. A towering gray mound lay just beyond the flames. Obscured by the fire and smoke, Elspeth couldn’t tell if it was natural or constructed. Protrusions of stone were embedded at even intervals up the center of the mound. The grayish surface looked sinewy and stretched.

“Where are we?” Elspeth asked.

“You must have completed your ordeal,” Ajani said. He shifted his axe from one shoulder to the other. “When Erebos opened the metaphysical gates of Nyx, we didn’t move, but the horizon moved around us. We have come to this new place without taking a step.”

Elspeth believed him. She felt dizzy, as if she’d spun in circles again and again.

“Are you injured?” Ajani asked, looking at her with concern. “Do you feel pain?”

For the first time since Daxos’s death, her guilt nearly overwhelmed her. But as soon as she conjured her friend’s face in her mind’s eye, it was replaced by an image of the little girl, Mina, her unborn child. Erebos had fused the memories in her mind and left her a mental legacy of all she could have had and lost. His deceit crowded against her true memories and left rage lingering in its wake. Was she injured? No, but she would never be whole again. She couldn’t answer Ajani’s question, so she ignored it instead.

“We made it inside Nyx?” Elspeth asked. “What happened to it? Why is it so empty?”

“I don’t know,” Ajani said. “What happened to you, Elspeth?”

Elspeth shook her head. Someday maybe she could tell Ajani about the death of Daxos and the ordeal she’d just been through. But they had managed what everyone believed to be impossible. They had entered Nyx, the realm of the gods. Xenagos must be somewhere close. People had suffered and died so he could make himself a god. People like Daxos, and Stelanos, and Nikka, wherever she was. The satyr must not be allowed to keep his false kingdom.

“No time,” she said.

Ajani nodded in understanding. “Heliod is searching for you. His minions skirted the edges of the shrine, but they wouldn’t enter it. Now that we’re in Nyx, they can’t be far behind us.”

“The last time I met Xenagos, he tyrannized my mind,” Elspeth said. Her voice was filled with hatred, and Ajani looked uneasy. “I must be free of his influence before I fight him.”

“I can protect you from his control,” Ajani promised. “I will never leave your side.”

“I passed the ordeal,” Elspeth said. “I can ask Erebos for something in return.”

“No!” Ajani said furiously. “He’s vain and cruel. Even Thassa was misinformed about the nature of the void. You don’t need a bridge.”

Ajani was partly correct. She didn’t need Thassa’s bridge to cross the void. Even as she spoke, she swung her blade in the ritualized form that focused her spellcasting. She was harnessing the mystical energy that would propel her and Ajani across the expanse.

“I do need something from him,” Elspeth said.

“Kill Xenagos, but forget Erebos,” Ajani insisted. “He was forced to open the gates to heaven for you. That’s victory enough.”

“It’s not enough,” Elspeth said.

With a graceful motion, she dashed to the edge and leaped toward the fire on the other side. Infused with her spell, Ajani followed her off the precipice, and for the fleeting second that crossed the gulf, they felt weightless and unbound by the laws of physics. To humans watching from the mortal realm, they appeared as two constellations chasing after the firelight in an otherwise empty sky. When Elspeth and Ajani alighted on the other side, Ajani grabbed her hand. She felt his strength course through her. He was giving her most of what he had—a powerful bulwark against Xenagos’s manipulation. She would be the master of her fate, not some puppet dragged through the dirt of someone else’s theater.

Before they could move, tendrils of fire burst from the wall reaching out to capture them. With the gulf at their backs, there was no place to back away from the flames. Together, they bolted for an opening to their right, but the flames blasted up like a geyser from the stone. In a heartbeat, the fire crawled behind them along the very edge of the precipice. It arched over their heads and trapped them in a fiery prison. Once inside, Elspeth realized they weren’t the only prisoners. She saw twisted shadows writhing in the flames. The shapes were heartbreakingly familiar. They had the forms of mundane creatures from the mortal realm—except these captured animals glittered with stars.

“Ajani!” Elspeth cried in disbelief. “Xenagos trapped the celestial creatures!”

Inside the Satyr-God’s trap, they saw the fuel that fed his cosmic pyre. The starry creatures that had enjoyed the eternal freedom of the night skies now suffered in torment. The mystical flames scorched them but didn’t consume them. Instead, the flames fed off their bodies, which had fused together in a wall of flesh and astral matter, and it intensified Xenagos’s power. At the sight of the creatures’
suffering, Ajani’s hands began to glow with healing light.

“Why is he doing this?” Elspeth cried.

“He’s lost the power from the revels and replaced it with this,” Ajani said, moving to a celestial stag nearest them. It scraped its hooves pitifully against the marble as it tried to escape its bonds.

“We need to destroy the flames,” Elspeth said. “We have to save them.”

As Ajani wove a mystical shield to smother the flames, Elspeth used her blade to cut the stag from the gray sinews that tethered it inside the flames. She freed the stag, which bounded away beyond the fiery prison. But the flames closed the gap before she could attend to another creature. Hundreds of celestials were trapped in the burning landscape around them. They seemed to sense that the planeswalkers were trying to help them, and their haunting cries grew louder.

Through the shimmering flames, Elspeth saw the gray mound stir and shift. The mound wasn’t part of the landscape as Elspeth first thought. As it rose higher, it became more defined. Red handprints were smeared on a sickly surface. Shoulders came into focus. Gargantuan arms stretched out with a grinding noise as joints snapped into place. Finally, the horned head of the God of Revels came into focus. Xenagos pulled himself to his full height. He now had the horizon-dominating, monumental stature of a god. But by dousing the flames, the planeswalkers were diminishing his power, and he could feel it. He spun to face them, and the flames parted above them.

As he stared down from his lofty height, Xenagos’s eyes met Elspeth’s, and then they settled on her blade. His expression didn’t change—there was neither glee nor distress. There was an absence of human emotion. She wanted him to be afraid. The blade had been crafted by Purphoros and claimed by Heliod. It was wielded by a mortal champion
who had crossed through the gates of Nyx. The Satyr-God breathed deeply, and the mystical flames flickered. Nearby, a white Nyxborn lion roared in pain as Xenagos absorbed more energy from the suffering creatures. Elspeth wanted to carve the features off Xenagos’s stolen face, but she couldn’t leave Ajani. He couldn’t disperse the flames on his own.

She needed to enlist help, but rank-and-file soldiers would just be absorbed into Xenagos’s horrific mass. During their time in Meletis, Daxos had shared hundreds of god-stories, including the archon saga. She knew the power of the archons-of-old and their epic battle with the gods on the Four Winds Plateau. Daxos had described their nature to her in painstaking detail. An archon would not quail before a god. An archon could avoid the consuming fires. The spell felt as natural to cast as the wind lifting a banner high above a field of battle. She imagined Daxos standing next to her as she summoned an archon to their aid.

With a deafening sonic explosion, a celestial archon materialized just above the flames. The faceless, hooded rider was mounted on a winged beast with eyes of fire and hooves of bronze. Elspeth shouted for her new ally to fly, and the archon spurred its mount along the length of the fire. The beating of its white wings sent a cold, ferocious wind sweeping across the jagged plain of Nyx. The oppressive wind flattened the flames to a mere flicker against the glittering stone. The archon circled around with astonishing speed and then doubled back. The wind nearly drove Elspeth to her knees, and Xenagos’s cruel flames retreated into nothingness. Reeling with the loss of his fire, Xenagos roared in disbelief and stumbled back into the darkness of Nyx.