From the Journal of Raleris the Lorekeeper

The ground, in this day and age, and in most ages of the past, generally stays where it is put. it is amazing how this maxim, which seems so stable and inarguable on so many worlds, can be dramatically overturned by the peculiarities of one obstinate plane. It's all very untidy and incovenient, and I have known more than a handful of Planeswalkers who react to that untidyness with remarkable irritation.

A normal mortal, human or homarid, centaur or cephalid, will gripe and groan about the things in his world that do not fit. A dwarf will hit it with a hammer until it works or shatters. A goblin might blow the object of his ire to the Abyss, taking himself with it. But a Planeswalker, particularly a planeswalker that has once tasted the potent magic of centuries gone, will look at a multiverse that has the nerve, the sheer gall, to jumble about the Blind Eternities like a heap of jewels and dirty rock intermingled, and decide that the laws governing all being are in error and must be rewritten along more suitable lines.

Planeswalkers, like Gods, Elder Dragons, and madmen, stand before the vastness of everything, and bellow, "YOU shall blink first!"

Commodore Guff's notes would not suggest a particularly well ordered mind. They are disjointed and scattered about, as are his instructions for navigating the Library, which I think he wandered mostly by memory alone. The only thing I can find written on the plane of Valjan is this fragment, stained with wine and age:

"VALJAN--Semi-constructed plane, very strange and chaotic place. Excessively meddled with many centuries ago, everything now jumbles about disagreeably. Mana bonds are slippery and potent, and calling upon the land has frustrating results. Perfect example of the damnable stupidity of our predecessors. Do not plan on going back, and do not recommend that anyone else visit it."

I unfortunately have no other existing sources for Valjan at the moment, although I hope to aquire some more soon. Once many years ago I stumbled upon a copy in the library of a whole history of the early meddling that Guff alludes to, but I set it down in a moment of distraction and cannot recall how I found it in the first place. One of the many frustrations of living in an apparently infinite library. With other things constantly distracting me, I never found my way to the plane to discover, for myself, what Guff found so objectionable, until a recent string of events forced me to see it with my own eyes.

What a plane it is.

It is not just the sight of vast mesas stretching upward like a landscape flipped on its end, or the sight of dead and fossilized trees marching across barren fens like tombstones, or the raging storms charged with such power and ferocity that they can spark life from the very stones. No, while Valjan boasts all of these things, the true wonder of the plane lies in the very malleability of these landscapes at the hands of a skilled Planeswalker. The ground of Valjan comes to heel when called, no matter where in the Multiverse you are, bringing all its strange weather and strange magic with it. And--as I nearly discovered at great cost!--all other lands are drawn to it as well.

The Commodore, whatever the states of his notes might suggest, was not at home to disorder, and a plane where the ground refuses to stay planted where it has been set was not to his liking. But the Commodore, until the folly that cost his life, was more Man than Planeswalker, and while he grumbled and groused about the plane that behaved less like a dependable hound and more like a bounding pup, he did not demand that all the Multiverse conform to his vision.

Others are not so patient, and when they call a pet to heel--whether plane or person--they fully expect to be obeyed.

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My first trip to Valjan was not unaccompanied, as most such ventures are. I happened to be playing host to a guest on the day the whole adventure started: an Aven, a bird-man, known on his ancient home Dominaria as Kirsh of the Flats. Kirsh is a healer by profession, and had, on that day, come to my Library in order to check the progress of an old infection I had aquired many years before and which plagued me continuously. Do not think that I failed to heal due to Kirsh's negligence, however. The disease is an ancient one that baffled even the ancient healers of the Thran, or so the stories go, due to its remarkable affinity for magic of any sort, including, unfortunately and ironically, healing magic.

Yet, Kirsh had given me the cleanest bill of health I could expect under the circumstances, and we were now chatting not about my perennial problems but about Kirsh's. It seemed that a recent run-in with another Planeswalker had sent him into a flurry of activity, wandering from plane to plane in search of information on madness and its treatment.

"The problem as I see it," I was saying to him, "is figuring out just what you mean first by madness. Delusions? Melancholy? Overwhelming terror? Disrespect towards books? Once we sort that out we can narrow our search, figure out where best to start wandering through" (I gestured to the shadowy corridors that surrounded us) "all of this."

Kirsh made a warbling, groaning cry and hopped lightly from the chair back on which he customarily perched during his visits, pacing the floor restlessly. "'Ris, that's the problem in a clamshell. I have no idea where to start! What counts as "madness" on one plane is divine genius on another, and on another it might simply be shiftlessness, or possession, or--and this is the worst of all!--it might be an actual curse or enchantment of some sort! There are as many magical maladies of the mind as there are of the body, as, I mean, as you obviously know."

"How long have you been searching?"

He clicked his beak and paused for a moment. "...Two months? Maybe more?"

"You're not usually this impatient, Kirsh," I observed mildly. "You must have 'Walked as much in the last two months as you did in the last two decades before."

At this point I had to move the small table bearing the meal we had been enjoying because Kirsh's wings had started involuntarily spreading in his agitation. So caught up was he in the harm done to mortal minds that he was blissfully unaware of the harm nearly done to our drinks.

"I've been living for... for centuries in a sun-dazzled haze, 'Ris! Before the rise of the False God, I spent years in isolation! I don't even know how many."

"We could no doubt calculate the exact number, work out a timeline of some sort--"

"Isn't it so typical that I've always settled in places with mild seasons, where day blended into day and year into year?"

"I suppose if you do it for several centuries straight it might be termed 'typical,' yes."

"I just feel like I've wasted so much time. I could have been prepared for everything that happened on Ameran if I had spent those years learning all I could rather than... than..."

"Practicing your arts as one of the finest healers across the Multiverse?" I said sharply.

This finally halted his frantic pacing. Awkwardly he refolded his wings along his back and took a breath. "Well. I'm a passable healer but..."

I rolled my eyes. "Dear Kirsh, I would trust my aging bones to no one else, please remember that." I stood and walked over to my friend. "You have set for yourself a grand task, and my library is open to you. I would wager you've already learned much, and with the resources of an infinite library you're sure to find the answer you seek." Kirsh did not smile (beaks, you will recall, are not suited to such expressions) but he looked grateful in an avian sort of way. "Now, as to this subdivision of materials," I began, when I was rudely interrupted by a question I had not heard in quite some time.

"May I borrow a book?"

Kirsh and I both started at the youthful voice that had asked the question and, turning toward the source of the sound, we saw a tall youth in curious clothes and a large jacket. Strangely, the room was faintly visible through the youth's body, as though he wavered somewhat out of reality.

"Beg pardon?" I stammered, flustered by the sudden intrusion.

"My name is Renn Winmoore. I am a Planeswalker like yourself, and I have come to your library to borrow a book from the famous Infinite Library of Guff the Commodore.

"I-I'm sorry," Kirsh said, "Are you... a ghost? A ghost planeswalker?"

Winmoore turned to him and nodded in assent. Kirsh marveled for a few moments, and I did my best to feign similar marvel, but in truth my mind was filled with misgivings. Renn's name was not unfamiliar to me, and for a time I had considered him as a possible candidate for apprenticeship, though the wildness of his nature held me back. But recently I had heard reports of strange appearances of the youth in odd locales, running errands of curious sorts, though to what purpose none knew. A change had come over the boy in recent times, a change much for the worse, and now he had appeared in my hidden library, requesting books. No, better say demanding, for those his tone was polite, there was a sense of perilous command lurking beneath the surface.

Having concluded our marvels (which, though Kirsh seemed not to notice, I could tell Winmoore bore with barely contained impatience) I offered my services in finding any book he wished to see.

"You are the librarian?" he asked.

"Raleris, the Lorekeeper, yes. And this is Kirsh of the Flats. I apologise for not introducing us to you sooner, but I was so struck by your appearance here that I quite forgot my manners. Now, what might I do for you, boy?"

A flicker of some emotion flashed across Winmoore's face at the final word, and my confusion and misgivings deepened. If I could, I thought, simply delay the boy, perhaps I could pry from him a purpose or some clue as to what I might expect, should our meeting go sour.

"Do you have a copy of [[[bookname]]]?" Renn asked immediately.

I hemmed and hawwed for a few moments then told him that while I was certain a copy of the book existed in the library, I was not sure just where it was at the moment, as the Commodore had left the collection in some disorder and such an aged volume would, no doubt, be further in the stacks, where I seldom went and where the books were often scattered about in a highly eccentric way befitting the eccentric intellect of the master. Winmoore stood perfectly still through the whole speech but somehow, despite the stillness of form and features, he radiated displeasure.

"Some history of Teresiare, then, any tome will do."

"Ah, our histories of Teresiare are, at this moment, all on loan in New Benalia. Perhaps there might be a volume or two that I missed, though, if you could be more specific as to the type of information you want."

Renn, frowning, opened his mouth to speak, when suddenly he recoiled as though struck. Kirsh let out a shrill cry of surprise and recoiled as well from Renn, his eyes open wide in shock. Renn's translucent form momentarily rippled and another form seemed superimposed upon it. And then, there was a terrible voice that seemed to issue from the very stones.

"Do not pry into thoughts that are not your own. Boy."

Winmoore--or the thing that wore Winmoore's shape--raised its hand and Kirsh was thrown upwards and away, and only his wings saved him from great injury. (To my understandably great distress, the table containing our food, which I had struggled so valiently to maintain, was knocked every which way by his flight.) The Renn thing turned and ran into the stacks and for a moment I hesitated, torn between my friend and my library. "Go!" Kirsh cried, however, righting himself in the air. "You must not let him take the books!" With that, I ran, as well as I could on aged legs, after the ghost boy.

Kirsh, faster and less afflicted by the frustrations of gravity, flapped above the stacks ahead of me and then dived, as a gull might, after his quarry. There was a burst of magic of in the distance and I hurried to come to my friend's aid.

Rounding a high shelf of scrolls, I saw Kirsh crouched behind a prismatic shield while the entity calling itself Renn Winmoore hurled bolts of energy at him. I was prepared to join the battle when there was a strange disturbance. It felt as though the room had been subject to a great upwelling of mana, and as Kirsh and I watched, surprised, we saw our patch of the library strangely transformed. Holes opened in patches of the floor upon what seemed to be a stormy sea, and the columns surrounding the shelves transformed into obsidian spires that reached upward into the darkness of the library's ceiling. Most alarmingly, a storm seemed to boil in the upper reaches of the stacks and lightening crackled across the obsidian spires.

With a wave, Kirsh attempted to dispel what seemed an enchantment, but to his surprise the spell had no effect. Whatever we were witnessing was, in fact, real.

We had no time to marvel at this however, as there was a great crackle of lightening overhead and a great chunk of obsidian crashed to the floor, shattering the tiles. Fearing that Renn would Planeswalk in the confusion, I quickly spoke a word of command and the ghost boy--who seemed, in fact, ready to step into the Eternities--swooned in a momentary confusion. I smiled slightly as he involuntarily clucked like a chicken several times. Too many mages approach magic with a stonyfaced sincerity, in my opinion.

I cast the spell not a moment too soon, for the splintered obsidian began assembling itself, with periodic crackles of lightening, into a fair facsimile of Kirsh. The obsidian creature leapt at my friend, its beak open in a silent cry. Kirsh grappled with the thing, and I rushed to his aid, hitting it with the first thing that came to hand. Unfortunately, it was a rare first edition of Memoires of a Cabal Gigolo. Its metal casing (locked tight and enchanted to prevent the more, shall we say, vivid fantasies from escaping) dented visibly at the blow and I hesitated for a moment. "'Ris!" Kirsh called urgently and, groaning, I brought the book down on the construct's head several more times until, finally, the energy dissipated and the obsidian blocks fell to the ground.

We both sighed with relief to have bested the foe, but I had no time to mourn the denting of my book. Kirsh's eyes widened and, before I had a chance to turn 'round to face whatever new danger assailed us, he pushed me aside and raised his arms. I landed heavily on the ground and saw a great gout of flame barrel towards us, but a great wind sprung up from between Kirsh's raised arms and the flames were turned aside. The wind knocked Winmoore into a bookcase and in a flurry of pages, he was buried.

"The books!" I cried in horror. Flame was everywhere, and my Library was in peril of burning to the ground. Kirsh raised his hands once more and the blue glow fortold disaster of a different sort.

"Not water!" I shouted in a great panic. "Not on the books!"

Kirsh dithered for a moment, fingering the cameos that hung from his belt in consternation, but then seemed to hit upon an idea. He raised his hands and there was a brilliant flash. When my vision returned, I saw that the books and shelves that had caught fire had been turned, marvelously, to gold. With nothing to burn, the fire was quenched.

"I'll turn them back later," Kirsh intoned breathlessly. "Adaptation of a spell I use to stabilize injured patients long enough to bring them to a place where they can receive better medical attention."

Climbing creakily from my place on the floor, I laughed at this clever marvel, but was interrupted by the sound of settling books. The pile into which Renn had been thrown collapsed inward and the ghost boy emerged from it--through it!--unscathed.

He had one book in his hand, and in the moment of distraction he had apparently gathered enough mana to him to facilitate an escape. Before our eyes, he vanished into the Blind Eternities.

Without hesitation, we followed.

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The chase was not short nor easy, but I kept pace with the Renn thing, Kirsh right behind me, and before too long we found ourselves nearing, in the roil of nothingness, a particular somethingness, one which seemed quite familiar.

The place we had landed was a sea, dotted with occasional black shores, of obsidian monoliths, above which a great storm roiled--the same storm that boiled in the upper atmosphere of my library. I felt out for the mana of the place and found it strangely active and tumultuous. It seemed almost eager to meet me and rose at my touch. To my surprise, there was a corresponding flicker in the landscape, and I realized how Renn had called the strange landscape into my library:

The land itself had come there at his call. In calling upon the mana bond, some of the physical land had responded. I had never seen anything quite like it, and I marveled at the strange qualities of the plane.

Not for long, for Kirsh pointed across the landscape, from the obsidian boulder on which we perched. A figure ran across the water in the distance, his feet not disturbing the roiling waves that he ran over. A book was clutched in his hand.

I was all for setting after the boy, but Kirsh put his talon on my shoulder and, breathing heavily, shook his head. I realized in that moment that my own breathing had grown laboured, and I was, in fact, quite exhausted from the battle in the library. I sank to the ground and Kirsh sank with me. "What should we do?" he queried.

I thought for a moment, then snapped my finger as an idea struck me. Gathering mana to me (nearly the last mana I had!) I cast a simple spell I had learned long ago as a boy.

From the surf bubbled up numerous pink balls. They sprouted spindly little arms and legs, fat ears, and idiotic grins.

Kirsh gave me a long look. "I really thought when you snapped your fingers like that you had hit upon some brilliant plan."

I laughed. "I have, my friend! These creatures will be our scouts and follow after our quarry. There are far too many to kill or dispel, and there are enough that even if the ghost boy runs tirelessly for hours, they can still guide us like breadcrumbs in the old Icatian story of Bjorn and Becca! I'm sure that was in the history of folktales I loaned you."

Kirsh nodded slowly. "It was very memorable. The story ends with the children devoured by a Llurgoyf for not saying their prayers."

I cleared my throat. "You do have a striking memory, Kirsh. But remember, we don't know if there are any Llurgoyfs on this plane."

Kirsh sighed. "Perhaps not literally... but..." He hesitated for a moment and then turned his head to look me directly in the eye. "When Renn recoiled from us, it was because I had touched his mind. You seemed uneasy, and I thought... well, I thought perhaps that I could read his intentions. For several years I worked with a siren and I thought I might emulate some of his own talents with mind magic."

"What did you see?"

"There is... something else in Renn Winmoore's mind. Something ancient and dreadful and cold. I saw a king--no, an emperor--dark and gold on a dark throne, and his flesh, as I watched, grew taught and dry and mummified. But he was more than that... corpse on the dark throne... He was..." Kirsh shook his head. "I can't describe it. It was like..."

"As though you had touched the mind of a whole land, a whole city?" I murmured.

Kirsh nodded in surprise.

Slowly, I spoke. "There was once a Planeswalker who ruled over countless planes as a god king of order. But the Mending stripped him of the greater part of his power, and eventually he was forced to preserve his life by turning his last bastion, the city of Ariva, into a phylactery. He transformed himself into a lich and Ariva became the vessel for his soul and his spark."

"I believe," I said, groaning slightly as I stood, "that this Planeswalker, Vasilias, is the entity you sensed. Come, my friend. We have much to do.

-----------------------------

Once upon a time there was an elf named Lusceleez. This elf lived on a strange world where the mana blended together in potent and volatile pairs. He lived upon a small island with several other researchers, who were studying the land and its strange properties.

But Lusceleez was not satisfied with his station, nor with his lack of access to the deeper records his people kept in their distant city--or so I learned from various notes and journals I discovered after this adventure concluded. Lusceleez was not, at first, a bad man; he was simply a man of ambition. This ambition was fanned by a baleful entity from another world.

Lusceleez's fellow researches one by one met ghastly fates in the waters of the great archipelago of western Valjan, and with the guidance of a man who was, in a way, a plane himself, Lusceleez's research into the fabric of the world proceeded without the hindrance of the scrupulous or the sane. As the date approached when he would carry out the ritual he had been planning for weeks, his thoughts were only of the great store of knowledge that was to be his reward, a library vast enough to dwarf the knowledge of the great library of Dumis, ripped from its world at his call...

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We Planeswalked back to the Library and spent some time resting, secure in the knowledge that my Beebles would lead us to Renn--or, more properly, Vasilias. Kirsh cast several spells to rejuvinate us and I fetched my flying carpet. I was relieved to find that the fragment of Valjan that had been summoned to the library had dissipated, but Kirsh and I agreed that we should not waste our strength disenchanting the books until after the confrontationn. All that taken care of, we set off to Valjan once more.

Beebles, being a staggering nuisance, are easy to spot in the wild, and, once we were aloft, we quickly found the trail of them bobbing in the stormy waters like fat pink jellyfish.

For several hours we flew low so as to avoid the lightening that crackled overhead, but soon we reached calmer skies. Gradually the spires fell away and the sea was covered in a dotting of small islands, strung across with plant life of some sort. The waters, now becalmed, filled with algae and we saw strange chimeric animals moving to and fro from sea to shore. It was a lush region and periodic breaks in the clouds bathed it in dazzling light. And, periodically, we saw the spots of pink trailing off in a rough line, bubbling after our quarry.

It was another hour, perhaps, before we came to a small outpost, large enough, perhaps, for a handful of people, fitted with a small dock and a lighthouse that overlooked a narrow bay. There was no sight of Renn Winmoore, but the beebles stopped here. Kirsh signaled that we should land in a small copse of trees by the shore and, assenting, I brought the carpet down. We found that the copse was not of any sort of tree either of us knew, but was instead seemingly some sort of hardened algae that had climbed out of the sea, or been left there by the tides and now waved in the air, towards its top, much as it would once have waved in the sea.

"What should we do now?" Kirsh asked.

I thought for a moment. "Do you know any spells of divination?"

Kirsh shrugged his wings. "I'm not sure how useful they will be. I might ask the sea if it has seen Renn Winmoore, but if he's Planeswalked again, the sea won't be able to tell us much."

"Let us give it a try," I said, "and perhaps we will be surprised."

Kirsh walked to the water's edge and passed his hands over the lapping waves. They bubbled upward and formed a shape something like a octopus if it raised itself up on its limbs to walk like a man or aven.

"There is a being, a youth, that may have passed over your waves. He can be as solid as coral or insubstantial as sea spray." Kirsh said. "Do you know him?"

A voice came bubbling from the figure, indistinct as though echoing in distant sea caves. "He has passed over our waves many times, back and forth on strange errands."

"What are his errands?"

"I do not know, but he comes to the house by the shore to meet with another."

"Who does he meet with?"

"An elf, tall but twisted like a deep root. He paces along the shore and mutters to himself. He had companions but they are gone, carried away in my arms to become coral and mud."

"What does he mutter?"

"Of bound papers and the words of mortals, of a birthright denied, and of plans to repay past unkindness in kind."

"And does he speak of his plans and the plans of the youth?"

"No, he speaks only of what he is due."

At this seeming impasse, Kirsh turned to me for some sign. "Let me try a variation on your spell," I said, and, drawing my power to me, passed my hand in front of the oracle. The water receeded and in its place was a rough golem of sand and dried seaweed.

"Have you heard the council of a twisted elf and a ghostly youth, carried out upon your shores?" I asked.

In a voice like wind throught dry grasses the beach answered. "They wish to replace us! They wish to supplant us and bring a new land into being."

"Perhaps they want to carry out a reverse of what happened in the library," Kirsh said.

I nodded, and returned my attention to the oracle. "Have they spoken of a book?"

"The elf cannot sense the distant world-to-come. He requires an anchor to tether his magics or the ritual will not work."

"But why use him at all?" Kirsh wondered aloud. "Vasilias has a Planeswalker vassal that could do the ritual himself."

"I know of no record of Vasilias, or Renn Winmoore, ever using the magic of growth and life, the magic closest to the land," I mused. "Perhaps this elf makes up for that lack."

"Then we have our chance," Kirsh said. "If we can stop the elf, we can stop the ritual."

I nodded and turned once more to the oracle. "When is the ritual to begin?"

"Why, it has already begun."

Kirsh and I started and, dismissing the oracle, we turned as one and raced from the copse towards the outpost. We took to the air, Kirsh with his wings and I with my carpet, and alighted, hidden, upon the large roots of one of the treelike algae blooms. Immediately Kirsh began muttering a spell, and the taller of the two figures--the elf, Lasceleez--stumbled in his chanting and handwaving as wisps of light appeared around his head. He swooned and crumpled to the ground.

For a moment, all was still, as we stood marvelling at the ease with which we had accomplished our task, and the other figure--Renn Winmoore--looked upon his fallen compatriot in surprise. Then, Winmoore's head turned to and fro, seeking us out, and finally alighted on our shadowed forms. "Raleris, Lorekeeper! You have been a great nuisance to me."

"I have been a nuisance to you, sir!" I cried, somewhat irritated. "I did not set YOUR library aflame, nor did I steal a book from you!"

"You know who I am, do you not?" Renn called, as though I had not spoken.

"You are an old man, like myself, so afraid of losing power that he did a very foolish thing and turned an entire city into a vessel for his soul! Yes I know you Vasilias, I know you quite well, I think!"

"You denied me once before, do you remember?"

"I stand by that decision even today!" I called back. "Now give me back my book, Vasilias, we've taken out your ritualist and I suspect strongly you need him for your spell!"

Renn laughed, and it was eerie to hear the cold laughter of a king in the voice of a youth. "You have taken nothing from me. If anything, you have made the next step all the easier. Lusceleez would have resisted this part, I fear."

And with that, Vasilias, in the ghostly body of Renn Winmoore, dissolved into the body of the fallen elf. Lusceleez stood, brushing the sand from himself, and laughed once more. With a gesture, a crown of five colors appeared around his head and the circles drawn in the sand around my book glowed with light. The sky grew dark as clouds appeared like a funeral veil.

"Oh dear," Kirsh murmured. "We could have planned this better."

"Yes this is all a bit ironic," I groaned. "Well, there's nothing for it. We must do what we can."

I stepped forward a few paces and raised a hand. "Do not think that you have won so easily, Vasilias," I called. "You must complete the ritual, and I am not so old yet that I have forgotten how a magical dual plays out."

Vasilias shook his borrowed head. "You are a foolish man if you believe you can stop me."

"Where does your certainty come from, then?" I said.

"I am a king," Vasilias said simply. "You are a librarian." And with that he raised his hands in preparation for the grand incantation.

But I, Raleris the Lorekeeper, am a Planeswalker, and like Gods, Elder Dragons, and madmen, I do not blink.

Kirsh repremanded me after the fact for my foolhardiness in opposing a Planeswalker as powerful and ancient as Vasilias. I reminded him, of course, that I was not so foolhardy as to touch the mind of an ancient god-king, and he squawked a bit under his breath at me but finally conceeded my point. I do not think it was so foolhardy, though, and explained my reasoning to him thus:

Vasilias is an ancient and powerful mage, indeed, with the mana of a whole pocket plane at his beck and call, not to mention the resources of Renn Winmoore and the elf Lusceleez. And I am an old man.

Yet, I was there, in the flesh (such as it is), whereas Vasilias was there as a ghost within a ghost possessing an elf! And while he had access to all five colors of mana, and was using them all for the conjuration he had planned (they were visible like serpents of light writhing upon the ground, five colors of magic all entwined to change the fabric of a world!) three of the colors were borrowed, and all were channelled through the body of a mortal. I made a bet, and it was this: that if Vasilias shouted for the world to come to heel, and I commanded it to stay, his voice would break before my own. My old throat would hold true while his borrowed throat would rip and bleed with the force of his call.

Lusceleez's hands gestured in command and the world shuddered. His mouth commanded and the sky went dark. His arms waved and a cobweb of many lights spread across the air and sea.

From countless shores across countless planes I drew all my power to me and began to cast a counterritual. I felt, briefly, Kirsh call his own mana to himself but he did not join in my casting and in a moment I was too caught in the contest of wills to pay him further heed.

My magic manifested as great azure glowing drakes, which cut through the cobwebs of Vasilias's power with their wings.

Vasilias gestured with his borrowed flesh and borrowed magic and my counterritual was, itself, countered, blown away as if by an invisible and intangible squall.

Again I spoke and at my word the tethers of the spell threatened to come undone. For a moment it seemed as though the sky was a tent ready to flap away in a high breeze.

Again Vasilias moved Luscellez's hands, this time manifesting the power of his young host. My very words were silenced in the roar of magic that issued forth, and it was only at the last moment that I was able to dissolve my form into seaspray, avoiding the fiery bolt of power.

My body became steam and then flesh again, and I raised my hands for another spell--too late! Vasilias, enraged by my impudence, now came in full force, and it seemed that a luminous skull was superimposed upon Lusceleez's own face. The terrible hollow eyes flashed--

It seemed as though a thousand, thousand thorns held me imprisoned and though I wept and cursed I could not move for the terror of their bitter sting, and as I stood ensared they dug into my side like a syringe and something new and hideous was birthed in my belly.

It seemed as though I crawled upon a vast plain that was my own skin, and I clawed the fleshy earth, digging furrows and fissures until I was old, old, old, old, old!

It seemed as though I stood before a throng of horrors who waited for me to be born again, and as I shed the itchy wet skin of life and emerged as a being of sinew and bone and clockwork they gave a standing ovation, and I knew they were but one voice and one mind and in that mind--in His mind--I was what I had always secretly longed to be: at last, compleat. And as the book that I had labored over fell from my metal hands the crowd became a cloud, a dark cloud that rolled over me.

But then at last it seemed as though there was a voice within that darkness, soft and musical, like birdsong.

"Your story need not end the way his did, old friend."

There came, then, a glowing being that cast aside the dark cloud and, in rapid flashes, I saw horrors of terrible shadow and luminous purpose do battle with what seemed at first scarecrows, then men of sack cloth filled with diamonds and sapphires, then a trick of the light as sun reflected upon water through dry shore grasses in a place where sand meets sky in a glittering horizon.

Kirsh of the Flats held my shoulder, his talons digging painfully into my skin, his eyes shut and his beak clenched in concentration. He had cast Vasilias's madness from me, though I could tell that it took much from him and drained much of the power he had drawn upon while I drew the emperor's ire.

His gamble had paid us both well. I looked across at where our opponent stood: Lusceleez seemed to be glowing from within, his lips twisted in a pained grimmace, his teeth clenched, eyes luminous. As I watched, they seemed to fissure, as though his very flesh was crystalizing and then cracking. In that instant, I knew that we had won: Lusceleez was burning from the inside. He would die before Vasilias could complete the spell.

Then, in a split second, his body contorted as though someone had reached out and wrung reality. His mouth opened in a silent wail of pain and an ichor black as a Nightstalker's heart dripped from his ruined limbs. With a howling, the sky went out, and something intangible but assuredly there began to come through.

Patting Kirsh's arm and gingerly removing it (I think, although I can't be sure for obvious reasons, that he gave me the Aven equivalent of a sheepish look when he realized how tightly he had gripped me) I sighed and shouted, "I think it's time to go, Kirsh. We've done all we could."

The aven shook his head and his expression grew determined. "Not all," he called. "There's still one more thing I can do for you." And before I could stop him, the fool spread his wings and lept into the center of the maelstrom!

I shouted after him in horror, expecting him to be blasted by the energies that were now striking all around the center of the mystic circle. As I watched, though, the bolts of magic struck him and glanced off. Ever industrious, he must have cast protection spells upon himself while I was in combat with Vasilias. He alighted in the center of the circle, snatched the book from where it lay, and made to take off once more. In that moment, though, a small form staggered forth from within Lusceleez's smouldering wreckage.

It was Renn Winmoore, the spirit boy.

Kirsh, to my amazement, paused for a moment, then snatched up the boy, and flew back to me. As he alighted on the ground nearby, I saw why. Renn wore an expression not of domineering arrogance but of abject misery. Vasilias, for the moment, had been driven into retreat.

It was a good thing Kirsh grabbed him when he had the chance, for the other world that Vasilias had called now began to manifest on Valjan. We watched from our vantage point as the world began to ripple and change. Kirsh, exhausted, fell against the bole of the great tree-thing and (ever carefully despite his exhaustion) let Renn drop as well. I too, a great weariness upon me after our duel, found my legs sinking beneath me. I knelt before the wonderous magic that was remaking the world, and together, an aged man, a meak aven, and a horribly cursed ghost, we watched Valjan change to something else.

But what we saw was not the library.

Instead, we saw a blasted and ruinous landscape emerge, upon which crawled strange humanoid forms. Before them, driven by them, were shambling fungoid creatures.

"What can this mean?" Kirsh murmured.

A strange suspicion crept upon me, and, turning to him, I begged him hand me the book he had risked his life to save from the planar overlay and wearily he handed it to me.

I read the spine, and began, quietly at first, then loudly as the sheer absurdity gripped me, to laugh.

The cover teamed with a multitude of strange creatures that had been carefully sculpted of the leather so that they seemed almost alive. On the spine was printed: Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII.

"I don't understand," Kirsh said. "What difference does it make what book he used?"

"It makes all the difference in the world," I chortled in what was probably a quite obnoxious and unhelpful a fashion. "Or all the worlds, I should say!" Gathering, with effort, some semblance of sobriety, I explained: "Most of the books of the Infinite Library are from the Library itself, but some are books that I have gathered myself, because I preferred not to dig through infinte archives in order to find the existing library copy. This book is not a book of my plane. It is a book from Dominaria, which I aquired some time ago after the Mending."

"Then," Kirsh breathed, realization dawning, mirth to mirror my own breaking at the edges of his exhausted voice, "Vasilias did not summon your plane at all, but--"

"Sarpadia. He called Sarpadia to this world, thinking he called my library. Sarpadia with its thrulls and its fungus men and its long history of failed empires." At this, I began to laugh, and this time Kirsh wearily began to laugh with me.

"Good," a soft voice whispered, halting our laughter. Kirsh and I looked between us to where Renn lay. "I'm glad we failed," the ghost boy continued, easing back to lie and stare blankly at the sky.

"Do not say 'we,'" I said gently. "You acted at his behest, not your own, not as a collaborator."

Doubt flickered across him, but for a few moments he said no more. Below us on the shore, the sky was returning to normal and the sun was bathing the thrulls, who were having trouble keeping the thallids from wandering off. They were, themselves, rather disoriented, after all.

After a while, he spoke again. "We were... he was never going to give the library to Lusceleez. The next step was to summon it from Valjan to Ariva. This was just like... passing a letter to a friend to deliver to someone else." He shook his head and continued staring up at the sky. "I think he'd like to bring Ariva here, if he could, but I haven't got the power, and neither does he. It's too much. But there might be solutions in the Library."

I shrugged, and chuckled somewhat darkly. "Maybe that was his reasoning, but maybe not. He came to me once in the later days of his empire, and I think he came to my predecessor once or twice as well. We always turned him away, and the Library is powerful--proof against the incursions of even one such as he. Perhaps he simply finally found a way to get the better of me, and could not resist the temptation."

Kirsh groaned. "Don't tell me that, 'Ris. To nearly die because an aged corpse wanted to spite you... it's too stupid a story."

To my immense pleasure, the faintest shadow of a smile showed on Renn's features. "But you got the old man's goat, didn't you? You really put one over on him."

I smiled in return. "I suppose I did, didn't I? Not only did my aven friend and I cheat him of the library, we cheated him of you, too."

"Be silent, librarian."

The voice held no rancor, that was what chilled me to the bone. It was simply disdainful, as if I had offended his sensibilities. And in the moment when Vasilias's voice issued forth like a tomb door opening, I knew that he had bound my magic. I could not speak, and could not raise a spell in my own defense, or the defense of Renn. Kirsh cried out and struggled to rise, but he was too weak, and too slow. The voice spoke once more: "Come now, you are needed in Ariva. Boy."

And with that, Renn was pulled from Valjan, into the Blind Eternities and, presumably, home. Kirsh cried out once more and made to follow, but I gripped him and shook my head. In a moment Vasilias's spell broke and I said, "It is folly to follow him now, my friend. We are weak and he has an entire plane at his command. We must not follow."

Kirsh's wings fluttered in consternation, his whole body seemed to tense for a moment in indecision, and then he began to weep. "I couldn't save him," he warbled, "I couldn't save him."

I made to embrace my friend, hoping to offer the healer some comfort, but upon rising I found that the world was strangely tilted around me, and a sharp pain came from my side. Some new magic, I thought dimly as the ground rose to meet me. Well, I'll find out what it is first thing after I wake. I thought I heard the cry of a gull, perhaps, or some other shore bird, and then all was silence.

------------------------------

I awoke in the library, in my own bed. I dimly became aware that I had been stripped of my tattered clothes and my side was bound. I gazed around the room blearily and quickly noticed Kirsh perched atop the back of a large and sturdy chair, an open book in his hand. Despite the precariousness of his position, his eyes were closed and his body puffed in and out gently in sleep. Noticing an intense thirst and hunger I cast around for a glass of water and was pleased to find one, and a plate of bread and cheese beside it, on the small table beside my bed. Kirsh, it seemed, had provided well for me in my sleep.

In reaching for the cup, unfortunately, I made some slight noise, which was enough to wake the aven. For a moment he cast around the room in alarm, but when his eyes settled on me, awake and seemingly well, he relaxed somewhat. "How are you feeling?" he cooed quietly, gingerly putting the book down on the chair, then stepping down himself and coming to my side.

"Fine," I answered, "though parched and ravenous. I have a hunger worthy of someone who just did battle with a mad, dead Planeswalker!" I chuckled. "But what of you? You seem to have hardly rested. Have you been caring for me this whole time?"

Kirsh shrugged his wings and gave me the look that I had decided was Aven for "sheepish." "The infection was bad, Raleris. It had started spreading again."

I sighed and nodded, not particularly surprised. "It has been many, many years since I drew upon such vast quantities of mana. The phthisis must have enjoyed the feast."

Kirsh nodded sadly. "I managed to halt the spread once more, but if it bursts free just a few more times..."

I sighed again and took a hearty gulp of water. "I really must find an apprentice soon. How many more enchantments can you slap onto my old organs before the phthisis sinks into them and consumes me utterly?"

The healer looked dejected at this, but said nothing, knowing that it was a rhetorical question. We both knew that the answer was "too few."

"I think," I said, idly breaking off two pieces of bread and passing one to Kirsh, "I've lingered for too long here, biding my time, taking notes on potential candidates... Perhaps I was scared that making a decision meant making the whole thing real. But what are these books for if not for reading? What does it matter if we save them from Vasilias if I die and leave them with no one to look after them?"

Kirsh nodded, swallowing his bread. "I understand that feeling, 'Ris. Although you've been all over the Multiverse while I hid on Ameran. You shouldn't be hard on yourself."

"And neither should you, Kirsh," I said calmly, "certainly not if it leads you to plan suicide missions to rescue a fellow 'walker from the clutches of a near god."

The aven started and stared at me. I met his gaze. "Come now, how long have we known one another? Long enough, certainly, to know you have a terrible need to martyr yourself. How many days has it been, Kirsh, really, since the battle?" He shuffled uncomfortably. "And you've had nary a sleep during the whole time, I expect. What do you wish to prove by this?"

"'Ris, I've got to help Renn somehow. I must try to break Vasilias's hold on his mind."

"Well you certainly won't be able to do that in Vasilias's very stronghold!" I waved the block of cheese at him. "Be strategic. Continue your studies into the mind. You are making progress, you know you are, you banished Vasilias's madness spells from me!"

This, if anything, made my friend look even more uncomfortable. "I did, but there were... things waiting for me when I entered that battlefield..."

I waited but Kirsh said no more. I shrugged as well as I could while still reclining. "And yet, here you stand, and here I lie, both weary but ultimately well, for the moment. We are both old men, Kirsh. Is it not time to put aside our fears? Although not," I added hastily, "in such a way that we end up walking straight into a trap set by a crafty undead emperor, of course."

At this, Kirsh chuckled. "This, Raleris, is why I spend so much time keeping you alive. You're the only Planeswalker I've met with any sense. I will keep studying, and try to set aside my fears.

We agreed to keep our ears open for any news of Renn. Between Kirsh travelling from plane to plane in search of the knowledge he needed, and my own redoubled efforts to find an apprentice, my hopes are that we might find him before Vasilias can make him do too much further mischief. With that pact made, I badgered Kirsh to finally get some rest. He admitted that it had, as I suspected, not been hours but days since I had collapsed, and the poor healer found himself protesting less and less coherently--he was nodding off as he stood by my bed.

It was perhaps a week later when I felt well enough to return to Valjan. The bones of the unfortunate elf Lusceleez lay upon the beach, scattered from the ministrations of the strange predators of the Archipelago. Beyond that, nothing remained of the ritual--the patch of Sarpadia that had been dragged to Valjan had, it seemed, gone home.

We broke into the now abandoned outpost and found a number of notes and journals from which we reconstructed the story of Lusceleez (related earlier in this narrative) and some of Vasilias's plans. It seemed that he planned to bring Ariva to Valjan, if the ritual to steal my library from me was successful. I suspect that he never planned to leave the library with Lusceleez, but rather intended to use Valjan as a waypoint in order to transport it to Ariva. The failure of the ritual must have left him doubly disappointed.

But Dominia continues to move forward into the future and we Planeswalkers must learn, perhaps, to live with disappointment. Those of us, that is, that once tasted the power to reshape worlds to our whims. Worlds like Valjan still bear some echoes of the grand manipulations of the past, and in drawing upon their power we call upon the echoes of a glory long past.

I like Valjan, and since my first encounter with it I have been back a number of times, if only to soak in the strange virility of its magic.

It nearly makes me feel young again.

Wow, it has been quite a while since I've read about... any of these characters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this the first story Renn has been in? Or has his original story not been transferred over yet? You know what, I'll go check for myself. I'm familiar with the character and what has happened to him, but I don't think I've seen him in a while.

As for the story itself, I'm a fan of first person POV, though I usually find it difficult to write it myself. My penchant for description sometimes falls outside the realm of what the character would actually be observing, and so making it seem realistic is not so easy... I like how you subverted that with Raleris, who seems like quite the amenable old windbag.

Too bad he's going to die. Probably painfully.

Valjan was an interesting locale, but I'm concerned about the elf. Whose name I will not even begin trying to spell because then people will be inclined to console my obvious sneezing over text and things just start getting weird. I'll call him Lu. Anyway, I did catch the little bit where you introduce him, but given his minimal impact in the story, I found the aside to be a little distracting. When he was introduced into the story proper, I had the information, sure, but I didn't feel any better about it. Since he just, you know. Dies anyway. I understand the need for access to green mana, but there may be a better way to go about doing it?

Unless I'm misunderstanding this entire exchange, which is likely because I'm tired.

Overall, I liked this story. Raleris and Kirsh as "best buds 4 life" (short as that may be) was fun to watch. A++, would and probably will read again. Thanks, Keeper!

I gotta change his name. That's the first order of business.

But yeah, you're right, at the moment he feels... superfluous. Originally I had more going on with rival researchers but then I decided that complicated things too much, and then at the last moment I decided he needed some more introduction so I literally wrote that little introductory three paragraph crap and slapped it in right before posting this in the arse-end of the evening, and it just clearly is not working.

So the big question right now is: do I find some way to expand his role, or do I cut him entirely? Cutting him entirely means rewriting some key moments of the conclusion which I'm sort of loath to do simply because the big battle scene is... honestly probably the best part in my opinion? I dunno. Thoughts?

Oh, and Renn hasn't been touched in ages because he was originally going to be part of a big collaborative novel by Barinellos, Trolljuju, and Beastengine. Then two of the three writers disappeared. I figured it was probably long since past time to bring Renn back into the fold.

I really love the interplay between Raleris and Kirsh. They have a nice chemistry between the two of them, and I think it works a lot better than just Raleris on his own. The only issue that sprang to my mind was why Raleris doesn't consider Kirsh as a potential successor, since the aven seems to appreciate knowledge, as well.

I really love the inclusion of "disrespect toward books" as a characteristic of madness. That was fantastic. I also really enjoyed the "Bjorn and Becca" fable, complete with the precious "eaten by a Llurgoyf for not saying their prayers" tag. Fantastic.

I felt they found the ritual a little easily. It's not a huge problem, by any stretch, but I had expected that to take at least some time. Having said that, though, the battle, I think, was paced very well, and went on for an appropriate length of time.

I found myself really hoping Renn had freed himself. Oh, well, I suppose. Perhaps some other day.

Well, for one thing I just never thought to pair the two characters up before. I dropped a hint in Dominian Nightmares that they knew each other, and never really expected to go anywhere with it. Then I was going through the roster of 'walkers to see who I could use for a demonstration of Valjan's properties, and Renn and Raleris jumped out at me, and then I just sort of... threw Kirsh in on a whim. It all came together very quickly, actually, and I didn't expect them to work quite as well as they do. Their dynamic is pretty great though, huh?

The other reason I never considered it though was just because Kirsh is, well, a healer by trade, not a scholar or a historian. But maybe that's not a barrier?

I've been rolling around a character specifically designed to be Raleris's apprentice for a while now, and I have the outline of a story for her, but... part of me wonders if she wouldn't be kind of redundant at this point. Raleris is actually sort of overflowing with candidates at the moment. Aloise, Morgan and Larasa, Kirsh potentially, arguably Renn if he could get de-Vasilias'd... heck, even Denner. If anything, he's going to have trouble choosing

I didn't want to resolve Renn's storyline with Vasilias just yet because I'm kind of curious to see what other people could do with that, and because that seemed like a pretty dramatic, seismic change for this story. It felt somehow like there should be more buildup to that moment, if that makes sense. Do you think it's a problem that he doesn't get free by the end?

No, I don't think it's a problem at all. I just found myself hoping he would, just because that sort of control kind creeps me out. But it works well from a storyline perspective, and it allows Vasilias to operate throughout the Multiverse, which is useful. Also, it gives Kirsh another thing he wants to do, although he's already got a lot on his plate with the fallout from Dominarian Nightmares (which I have finally read, by the way, and it was excellent!)

So no, I actually think from a narrative standpoint, it's better than Renn not go free. It's just that little bit of humanity in me wanted it for him, that's all.