Someone behind her speaks, "You left the party early. She tries to kick the carapace into the grave she dug, but it is heavy, heavier than the shovel, heavier than the earth. It granted her the ability to unleash a call through the branches of the Invasion Tree and speak the glory of Phyrexia to every plane in the Multiverse.Īnd right now, Nissa is disgusted with herself because-despite her friends' sacrifices, despite Chandra's sacrifices-part of her misses hearing those planes. The copper ribcage had been both trap and armor, a construct of crippling terror yet intoxicating power. They cleansed the oil from her Stem Sword, but they could not cleanse the memories of what she had done. They cut her out of her metal prison and cleansed her mind of the Phyrexian influence. After the Phyrexian defeat, Nissa's friends said they forgave her. Nissa and the other Planeswalkers had tried to fight the Phyrexian invaders, but they became the enemy's weapons. She rubs one, and dark residue flakes off on her fingertips. Its copper skeleton is covered in mangled spikes, and those spikes are covered in the dried blood of her friends. With the Phyrexian leader dead and her virulent vice grip on the glistening oil severed, the survivors were able to cleanse it with Halo, but the inert metal remained. Next to it, her Phyrexian carapace awaits burial. She thrusts her shovel into the ground.įinally, the hole is deep enough. So not wanting to bring down the spirits of their celebration, she excused herself. They'd all lost their sparks, but only Nissa still wanted to planeswalk.Įven if her friends seemed to be moving on without her, she still cared about their happiness. Maybe no plane would hear her ever again. She felt cut off, lost in the Multiverse with no voice calling her home. Neither did the five colored suns, more refugees from Mirrodin now at home in Zhalfir's sky. Nissa's Zendikar was locked a Multiverse away.īut Zhalfir still never spoke to her. So Nissa worked with the other survivors, ate with them, talked with them. "Of course." Teferi put his hand on her shoulder and said, "You will have a new home here if you just try." "Are you sure I'm welcome?" she had asked. Nissa saw relief-even happiness-in their eyes as they moved in alongside the Mirran refugees, for they were all united as survivors.
Just that morning, Karn and Koth had finished roofing the last house in a new village. She knows somewhere in the firelight, her friends are celebrating, too. Since leaving the austere Joraga clan in her youth, music had become her favorite indulgence, but today it mocks her, does nothing but make her chest ache. The drums of Mirrodin and Zhalfir are celebrating their victory over the Phyrexian invaders. Not the deep, reverberating, voice of a plane that shakes her very soul, but something distant, lively, and human: music. Perhaps the damage extends beyond her spark, right to her animist powers. She asks the plane how it feels, but it does not answer. So, to comfort herself, she touches the heavy clod she lifted from the red earth, but the dirt does not reassure her like the familiar soil of her homeworld, Zendikar. No amount of theorizing offers Nissa comfort. Maybe this is some sort of natural response from the Multiverse a great pruning, a taking back of that mysterious energy that once filled them. Holes had been punched in the space between planes. The sylex had gone off in the Blind Eternities. Chandra is the only one among them who seemed to have kept hers-well, Chandra and Ajani. Teferi's spark had faded sometime after the invasion. Karn theorized it was damaged when the Phyrexians altered Nissa's mind and body.īut Teferi only listened and nodded. Chandra suggested it was a side effect of her revival. No one could answer what had happened within her soul. She asked the others what happened, but they could only describe the battle and her revival. But she cannot ignore the question that claws at her heart: is this what happens when a Planeswalker loses her spark? She concludes she must have overexerted her recovering body and decides she will take a well-deserved rest upon completing this task.
Once, she could bend nature with a whim, but now her heart pounds, her limbs shiver. Under the cover of night, she drives her shovel into Zhalfir's ground and wipes sweat from her brow.
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