Chardis appeared on the new world in a flash of flame. Around him, the nearest trees disintegrated into motes of ash, along with the grass and about half of a deer. The Aether trail had been fresh, so his quarry was near. Chardis could have destroyed him a few times before, but the chase was half the fun. If he had simply wanted to kill the 'tourist' that would have been easy, but he wanted that man to understand that death was coming first.

Chardis paced forward slowly, leaving bromstone footsteps. He did not have to go far before he found him -- Illarion Vale. The other planeswalker turned slowly. looking away from... a faintly glowing meepling? Seriously?

Chardis laughed. "Confessing to animals in the face of the end?" he asked, "I'll admit, you never cease to surprise me."

Illarion shrugged, "I think this is the part where you kill me?"

Chardis sighed and rolled his eyes. "You just had to suck the fun out of it at the end, didn't you?"

Fire flew from his hands, countless incendiary strands. His entire field of vision became orange-yellow, and he felt the satisfaction of removing another opponent, no matter how pathetic.

Yet, when the smoke cleared, there was Illarion Vale, his glowing meepling, and the stump it sat on, completely unharmed by Chardis' torrent of fire.

"What?" Chardis demanded, "How did you survive?"

"You don't know where we are, do you?" Illarion asked

"What does that matter?" Chardis demanded He raised his hand, fire in his fist, ready to strike again.

"One of the advantages of being a tourist," Illarion said, picking up the meepling and petting it gently, "Is that you end up knowing quite a lot of places very well. This is Iun Ilana, the plane that lives. And sees. And thinks. And... moves."

At that. the land around Chardis buckled. From his wake of cinders, the aura of distruction he had poured out upon Illarion Vale, there arose rank after rank of elementals -- no, not elementals, the energy in them was wrong. They were just earth and stone. Standing, staring at him and ready to fight.

"And I think she likes me better than she likes you."

Illarion Vale took a deep breath of the cold autumn air, and gazed out upon the familiar sights of home. While wandering the multiverse had not reduced his desire to go out and tour it, it had given him an ever-growing appreciation of that singular vista that existed nowhere else in the Multiverse.

Slowly, he walked down the wide lane, pausing to watch the children playing, for Old Man Withers to yell at him to get off his lawn, and finally walked up the creaking steps to what had at one time been his family house. Carefully, he knocked on the door.

There was no answer

"Marina?" Illarion called. He knocked again, then tried the handle. The door was unlocked, and opened freely.

Inside, the house was very dark. All the shutters were closed, drapes drawn. Strange, Illarion thought.

Then, a sibilant, female voice spoke from the darkness.

"You know," she said, "You made a mistake when you sent my brother fleeing from Iun Ilana with his tail between his legs."

"What..." Illarion muttered, "Show yourself!"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" the woman -- Syl of the Dual-Walkers -- replied, "Your mistake was that you should have killed him. Oh, I would have come after you one day or another, once I worked out what happened, but it might have forestalled my revenge, and when I took it I'd do things my way, rather than his."

An eerie glow -- a glow that presented no earthly color at all -- began to seep from the beams of the house, faintly illuminating the world around, casting shifting shadows all about. The big chair was turned away from the door and Illarion, and Syl's voice echoed from it.

"I never was one for theatrics." Syl said, "But my dear brother insisted that a subtle poison or a knife in the night would be far too easy. No, you let him live, so you had to live."

Illarion approached the chair. He set one hand upon its high back.

"Go ahead." Syl said. Her voice was coming from the other side, near and very real, yet somehow the unknown filled Illarion with trepidation.

He stepped about in front of the chair, intending to face Syl of the Dual walkers and whatever fate awaited him.

He faced the price of his victory, and the fate that had already been decided -- A grey, mangled mass of flesh that might once have been human, that couldn't be human. Illarion fell to his knees, and Syl's laughter echoed from the rafters rather than that malformed abomination. Whatever magic had killed that person was...

The mass moved, shifted. A gap opened and a gasp of foetor escaped it.

No... it wasn't dead.

Compared to such a fate, death would be a mercy, and as the reeking, rattling gasp rose to a faint, inarticulate wail, Illarion wished for all Dominia that Chardis had killed him, instead of this.

"Brother will be pleased." Syl said, and from her unseen position planeswalked away to share the news.