Daneera entered through the door and looked around at the darkened inn room on the other side. She looked around for a few seconds, her keen eyes immediately scanning the shadows. She saw nothing, but sight was hardly her only sense. Daneera sighed.

"I know you're in here. You can come out now."

From the shadows off to her right, Daneera heard a whimper.

"Antine..." she began.

"Oh," the fox said. "Daneera. It's...it's good to see you! If I'd known you were coming..."

Daneera sighed again. "Antine, what's going on?"

"What do you mean?" The fox asked, failing in his obvious attempt to sound innocent. "I was just, ahh, well..."

Daneera took a step in Antine's direction. "Antine, Sundar Elarion came to find me."

"Oh," Antine said, lowering his head a little. "Well, Sundar and I don't travel together anymore. There was...an incident."

"I know," Daneera said. "He told me. Antine, Sundar's worried about you. And after hearing his story, I'm worried about you, too."

Antine lowered his vulpine head to his chest. "There's...there's nothing to worry about. I'm great. I've never been better! I..."

The fox stopped, and did not continue. Daneera exhaled slowly. "Antine, it's time for you to stop."

"I have!"

Daneera leveled her gaze at the fox, who turned away from her. "Well, I haven't stopped, I guess, but I could if I felt like it."

"Sundar said you went crazy in a market square because he tried to take it from you."

"Well, it wasn't his!" Antine said. "I paid for it! He can't just..." Antine trailed off and looked away again.

Daneera took a few steps forward and laid a hand on the fox's shoulder. "Antine? It's time to give it up."

It took several moments before the fox could look Daneera in the eyes. When he did, he was crying. "But, Daneera, it's soooooooo good! Have you ever had it? Try it once, and you wouldn't take it away from me..."

Daneera shook her head. "No, Antine. I don't even know what that stuff is called."

Antine looked up at her, then held something up toward her. "It's called chocolate, Daneera, and it's amazing!"

Daneera sighed once again, and then pulled Antine forward to stand next to her, with her arms around his shoulders. "We'll get you through this, Antine. But we need to get rid of that stuff."

Antine whimpered. "But...where?"

The forest mage shrugged. "We'll have a bonfire. I know a nice place in Mellow Marsh. We'll burn every last gram you've got, and then see about getting you some help before this thing cracks you."

Antine nodded sadly. As they started walking out of the room, Antine looked up at Daneera. "After we burn it, can we get s'more?"

Daneera groaned.

...one of your characters found an artifact containing a powerful, wish-granting Djinn!

...one of your characters knows/knew/has met/does meet with any canon character, living or dead. Who would you headcanon your character as having some sort of interaction with?

Rhonwen looked up at her foe. Never before had she faced so potent a Planeswalker. Never before had she felt so helpless.

"Give me the Moxen," the creature hissed, "And I will sssspare your life... until last."

"If you think that's what I'd want," Rhonwen declared, "Then you truly have forgotten what it means to be human."

Rhonwen struck at the monster's tentacles with beams of pure light, filled the sky with fire. A wave of shadow, cold as ice, washed over Rhonwen, and she was forced to one knee with the might of it.

"The Moxen." the monstrosity demanded, "If not to ssssave your life, if not in resssspect for all I taught you, then to preserve this world... and everyone on it."

Rhonwen followed the creature's eyes, knew that he had caught scent of the protections she had placed over Cornelius, hoping to spare him the wrath of an overwhelming foe, hoping that they could both live long enough for the planeswalker that had once been a passing friend to see some shade of reason.

Rhonwen's head slumped. "Alright." she said, "I'll tell you the truth. I had them destroyed."

"Destroyed?!" the monster bellowed.

"Yes, destroyed!" Rhonwen shot back, "Shattered into pieces and used for gods know how many powerless trinkets! And do you know why? Because of people like you've become, Tev Loneglade!"

At once, Rhonwen's foe slammed into her. She felt a tentacle wrap about her chest and begin to squeeze.

"That is NOT my name!" it roared. "Now, I will ssssee what is really in your mind."

Threads of power invaded Rhonwen, reaching into her mind, laying her secrets bare. The magic saw her life, her love, the fall of the bearers of the Moxen, and finally the doom of the jewels beneath a dwarf's hammer.

"I give you thissss," the monster said, "You have been an honorable fool."

New threads of power reached into Rhonwen. Threads of darkness spread throughout her, tearing at her essence like ten thousand hungry mouths, and Rhonwen knew that she was dying.

"But I am Tevesh Szat. I am the Doom of Fools."

As darkness began to swallow Rhonwen's vision, cold silence filling her mind, numbing her senses, she spared her last thoughts for Cornelius.

I'm sorry, she thought, We'll have to wait another lifetime yet.

Tevesh Szat spared Rhonwen no thoughts, nor Cornelius, behind the crumbling magical barrier. What he wanted was not here, nor indeed it seemed anywhere in the planes anymore. He simply left her on the field of wildflowers, wilted by their battle, to be buried where she fell.

In this universe, which is actually totally compatible with M:EM Canon, Rhonwen learned the spells she used to make Cornelius immortal from Tev Loneglade (Who had a very similar unidentified spell effect in place on his sister. Too bad it doesn't protect from a sword through the chest.). She encountered Tevesh Szat, the monster that Tev Loneglade eventually became, not long after her segment of The Ring, leading to her demise and the Mox Ring never being picked up. This places Rhonwen's death somewhere between the breaking of the Shard of Twelve Worlds and the Phyrexian Invasion of Dominaria, which is within tolerances for the Mox Ring having gone through three generations of dwarf jewelers.

"I wouldn't even be cutting into their profit margin - at first." Fisco insisted, tapping the ash off his lit cigar. His feet were kicked up on a rather expensive looking table, while an austere woman in Azorius armor watched him with a look of distaste from across the room. The focus of his attention, however, was the young man who was watching him with both head and eyes hooded. Smoke trailed lazily off his cigar as he stuck it back into his mouth. "Look - what've the Orzhov done for you? Given you some headaches? Sure, they keep to themselves now, but without competition-"

"The balance in Ravnica is tenuous enough." Jace replied tersely, interrupting the Shark. "The Orzhov cause me few headaches compared to some of the others. I won't permit you to start a turf war simply because you're bored."

"...Without competition," Fisco continued around his cigar, pointedly ignoring the other planeswalker's jab. "The Orzhov grow. Unchecked-"

"I am the check." Jace pointed out.

Fisco rolled his eyes. "The Obzedat will outlast you. They'll probably outlast me. Other guilds may mint their own coin, but its only the Orzhov's that is worth anything. Are you trying to compete with money, Beleren?"

"I'm not." Jace said, tenting his fingers. "But you are. It doesn't seem to be working."

Fisco had nothing to do but suck at his cigar at that statement.

"Look," Fisco sighed, "I've got contacts. Dimir. Simic," he flicked his eyes over towards the armored woman, and winked, "Azorius. But without Orzhov say-so, they're just contacts. No one wants to make a move on the market without their approval, and that's not healthy for any city. Without someone moving against the monopoly, the Orzhov hold too much power." Jace remained silent, so Fisco pressed onward. "Worst case scenario? I get the Orzhov off your back about tax exemptions for a month. My little venture falls through, and I wash my hands of Ravnica."

"And the best case scenario?" Jace inquired flatly. Fisco grinned.

"I give them a run for their money."

"Why can't I read your mind?" Jace asked suddenly, folding his hands and placing them on the table. His expression remained neutral, but Fisco immediately felt himself frown. What sort of reaction was that statement supposed to illicit? "It's all darkness and shadows. I can't see into it."

"I'm not here to answer your questions, Beleren. We're negotiating." Fisco growled.

"Transparency is something I value during 'negotiations', Fisco Vane." Jace said. "Had I been able to peer into your head sooner, we may have come to an agreement more easily."

"Transparency works both ways, kid." Fisco said, drumming his fingers on the table. "You don't see me snooping around in your skull."

"If you could, would you?" Jace asked.

Fisco gave the Living Guildpact a flat stare.

"I've got enough going on in my head." He replied. "I don't need to know what's going on in yours."

Jace appeared to consider this for several, long moments.

"You're a man of deals, Fisco Vane." Jace observed, finally. "I'll make the Ozhov comply with your demands for a foot in the market, on the condition that you tell me how you are keeping me out of your head."

Fisco rolled his cigar between two fingers, before finishing it off in one, long drag. He sighed the smoke out, and flick the stub away. It vanished mid-air in a puff of smoke.

"I don't even have to ask why you want to know that to tell you 'no deal'." Fisco stood up, adjusting his fine leather coat and putting his hands into his pockets. "Though you only made the offer because you knew I'd say no." Jace smirked, and stood up as well.

"I thought you didn't need to know what was going on in my head." Jace said.

"Just because I don't need to, doesn't mean I don't." Fisco replied. He pulled out a coin, and flipped it idly towards the Living Guildpact. It bounced once, then landed flat on the table directly in front of Jace. "If you change your mind... or need something else, get in touch."

Jace picked up the coin, examining it closely.

"...How does this help me get in touch with you?"

"You're a smart kid, Beleren." Fisco grunted. "Figure it out."

Then, Fisco left Ravnica behind without another word.

Ship everyone!

Beryl stared wide-eyed at the scorched, blackened landscape. Slowly, her eye drifted down to look at her own hands, as though in disbelief.

She felt someone clap her on the back.

"You did good, kid," Jaya said.

"But," Beryl started to stammer, "I never meant to--"

"--Doesn't matter," Jaya said. "You still did good." Then the planeswalker winked at the scarred pyromancer. "Keep it up. It only gets easier."

And, with that, she was gone, leaving Beryl standing alone in the ashes.

There was a broad-based decanter sitting on the table next to Denner Fabellian, with perhaps just a finger’s worth of tawny port left in it. The port was of a questionable vintage, and had been sitting in the decanter for so long that it was thick with sediment.

Denner Fabellian knew this because, just moments earlier, he had drunk three full glasses of the dark, fortified wine in rapid succession.

Now Denner was lying face-down on the table, naked from the waist up, with his arms and legs splayed wide. That position afforded him an excellent view of the nearby decanter as the clipper ship Red Morning pitched rhythmically beneath him. The seas had been rough all day, and each wave that the little clipper skipped across set the remaining port in the bottom of the decanter sloshing back and forth, back and forth, like an ocean in miniature.

The delver swallowed. Despite having consumed several measures of liquid courage, his throat felt inexplicably dry.

“Should we really be doing this now?” he mumbled to the table beneath him.

“No better time,” came a woman’s voice from above. “No better place.”

Denner tried to roll over, but a pair of strong hands held him by the shoulders and pressed him flat. Before he could protest, he felt the table shudder as the woman sprung up on top of him. She positioned herself with bulk of her weight atop his lower back, so that she had him pinned in place.

“Don’t move,” she said. “The more you move, the more this is going to hurt.”

Denner cleared his throat. Beneath him, the table’s wooden top was rough and sticky.

“That’s the thing, though,” he said, with just a hint of a stammer. “I mean, with the ship moving like this, how can you possibly keep your hand steady?”

From above, Denner heard the woman laugh. Then he winced, as he felt her needle bite his skin.

“I know this ship, and she knows me,” the woman said, as she began to ink the delver’s back, just below his left shoulder blade. “We move together, like lovers. You needn’t worry about my hand.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say,” Denner said, feeling tears welling in his eyes. “You’re the one holding the needle.”

Again, the woman laughed.

“Once,” she said, “years ago, when the sea was as high as the ship was tall, a galley mate bet me half his share that I couldn’t balance a dagger on its tip for the length of three glasses.”

Denner squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to focus on recalling the name of every species of fish he had ever eaten, in alphabetical order – anything to keep his mind off the pain he felt as the woman worked her needle across his skin.

“Who won the bet?” he asked.

“I’d still be balancing that dagger today,” the woman said, “if I hadn’t needed it for other purposes when the galley mate declined to pay.”

Denner coughed. As he did, the woman’s needle struck a nerve, and he gasped involuntarily. The woman clicked her tongue at him.

“Sit still,” she said. “It’s your squirming that’s the problem.”

“How am I supposed to sit still?” Denner moaned. “You’re hurting me.”

In response, the woman dangled a small length of rope in front of Denner’s face.

“Bite down on this, if you have to,” she said.

For a while, Denner held the end of the rope between his clenched teeth, which at least kept him from crying out as the woman resumed her work. But doing so made him feel stupid, and weak, so, after a few minutes, embarrassment overtook pain, and he spat the salt-laced cord back out.

“Does this mean you’re going to keep still, now?” the woman asked, as her needle made short, precise strokes across Denner’s back. ”Because, I’ve marked more than two score virgins, and not a one of them carried on like you’re doing.”

That comment made Denner flinch, which earned him an exasperated sigh.

“What do you mean, virgins?” he asked anxiously.

“Virgins,” the woman repeated, before pausing for a second to refill her needle with ink. “Bareskins. Blank canvases, before I gave them their first marks.” She adjusted her position slightly, and Denner could feel her breath on his clammy skin, as she leaned in close to begin applying the fine details. “One of them had barely turned fourteen when I gave her her globe, and she managed to lie still as a board.”

Denner grunted. “Maybe she liked pain,” he said. “Some people do.”

“I take it you don’t?”

“No,” Denner said, wincing. “I’ve had more than my share of pain.”

“You don’t have to like pain to learn from it,” the woman said. “Pain is how the world tests us, and, if we survive it, it makes us stronger. It makes us more than we would otherwise have been.”

For a horrible moment, as the woman spoke, Denner’s memory flashed back to his poisoning. The delver remembered, in perfect, excruciating detail, the agony that had filled his every waking moment as the magical poison had spread through his blood, consuming him body and soul. He remembered feeling like his veins were filled with acid. He remembered spasms so violent he thought his back would snap. He remembered clenching his teeth so tightly that he felt sure he would grind them to powder.

In as much as his position would allow him to, Denner tried to shake his head.

“You couldn’t possibly understand the pain I’ve been through,” he said.

Suddenly, the woman fell silent, and Denner felt her hand stop moving. For a long, long moment, she sat stone still, until Denner wondered if she was actually holding her breath. Then, finally, she bent forward, so that the top of her head crept into Denner’s field of vision.

From the delver’s point of view, her face was upside-down. He could just see the knotted scarf which held back her long hair, the deeply-tanned skin of her forehead, and her sharp eyes, which were staring daggers at him.

Denner tried to look away, but, before he could, he caught the woman’s gaze. And, in that moment, he saw something beyond anger or hurt in her eyes.

He saw something else. Something he recognized from seeing his own face in the mirror.

He saw the look of someone who has known more pain than any living person should.

“I’m sorry,” Denner said, quietly.

For another, excruciating moment, the woman continued to stare at him. Then, mercifully, her face disappeared back out of view. Denner felt her needle kiss his skin again, and, instead of wincing, he almost sighed with relief.

“You ought to be more careful about what you say, to the person who’s giving you your star,” the woman said. Her voice was low, but there was no anger in it.

“I’m sorry,” Denner said again.

“I know,” the woman said.

Then, for a long time, neither of them spoke, as the woman applied the finishing touches to her handiwork.

Eventually, Denner couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“What was your first tattoo?” he asked.

“The mark on my cheek,” the woman said. “The points of the four winds.”

“That must have hurt.”

To Denner’s surprise, the woman laughed.

“I nearly bit through the rope,” she said.

“But you survived,” Denner said.

“You’re almost as smart as you think you are,” the woman said.

Then, just as quickly as she had leapt on top of him, Denner felt the woman slide off his back and back down to the floor.

“We’re done,” she said. “You have your first mark.”

With a groan, Denner peeled himself off of the table, and rose to his feet. It took him a second to find his legs, as the Red Morning rolled beneath him. His back throbbed, as though someone had punched him there.

He saw that the woman was holding out a silvered mirror for him, which he took. By twisting his shoulders, and angling the mirror just so, Denner just caught a glimpse of the seven-pointed star that the woman had inked upon the back of his left shoulder.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“On my world, that was our pole star,” the woman said, her voice a whisper. “To bear that star is the mark of a true navigator.”

Denner was silent for a long moment, as he studied his own reflection in the mirror.

“I will find your world for you,” he said.

"I know," the woman said, "I've seen your mark."