Chapter 75: Dark Petition (Patreon)

“What was that?”

Rose shrugged, though I still caught the slight shiver it was no doubt meant to hide. “Another one of us, you think?”

I bit my lip, mulling the possibility over. That there could be more of me, more of us, running around the Blind Eternities was an interesting thought…it just didn’t fit.

“No.” I shook my head. “We didn’t feel anything like that the first time, did we? Something like that…”

Rose snorted. “Yeah, it’d be pretty damn hard to miss.”

“So it’s something new.” I folded my arms. “Something intrinsic to this plane, but that feels far to small, doesn’t it? As if it’s just the tip of a much darker mystery.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors there, Calamity Jane.”

I waved her off, mind working frantically over the implications. There was something deeply wrong, in the bones of this plane. We saw it with the angels, but more than that their was an air of disquiet that lingered over this entire world. 

It was enough to unsettle Liliana as well, though she did a good of hiding it.

“We already said it, didn’t we?” I mused. “There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

This time, Rose wasn’t so quick with our father’s old joking reply. Instead, she started pacing, fingers picking at the cuffs of her button down.

I wasn’t sure where other me had picked up her sense of attire from, but whereas I had come to prefer my cloak and ‘costume’ even in informal situations, Rose tended to summon herself a pair of nice dress shoes, navy slacks, and a white dress shirt. The outfit looked comfortable, bespoke even, though I wondered how she’d been convinced to wear it so casually.

Dress clothes, to me, still only held memories of two funerals in the rain.

At length, she spoke again. “It’s doing more than messing with us, then.” Rose curled a finger through her hair. “The angels obviously, but there’s so much more.”

I nodded. It was just a restatement of the conclusion I’d already come to. It still felt heavier, to have those words said out loud.

So, I didn’t give voice to that thought, instead I said, “There’s a shadow hanging over the whole plane.”

Rose smirked. “And we’re just caught in the Umbra, aren’t we?”

I shrugged. We could, ostensibly, leave this plane behind for greener pastures. There were even several other Walkers on Innistrad, no doubt they could handle any threat that came after them easily enough. Liliana was frightening enough in her own right, to say nothing of this Sorin Markov.

But then, leaving people behind had only grown more bitter with each failure. The thought of leaving one more person hanging in the wind, let alone an entire plane was utterly unpalatable.

“We’ll have to investigate,” I said.

Rose, for her part, was no less a hero than I. She simple nodded, popping her knuckles. “Yeah, too bad we gotta put work in here on our internship.”

“This whole ‘find a solution to our soul problem,’ seems to have jumped a few rungs in priority.”

Rose chuckled. I watched as she popped the cuffs of her sleeves, summoning a few mechanical familiars with a wave of her hand. Shop assistants, by the looks of it. “We could always leave and come back.”

I looked up, seeing past the vaulted ceiling of the tower, to the stars that lingered beyond. “Can we?” I asked. “For some reason I feel like things won’t be that simple.”

Rose stopped turned back from the pallets of supplies she was organizing. “What do you mean?” She frowned. “If it’s just a problem with Innistrad let’s just jump in—” She cut herself off from saying ‘scroll,’ glancing over at the undead ‘servitor’ standing by the door. “Jump to another plane, third time’s the charm it and come back b-better than ever?”

I sighed. “I keep forgetting that you haven’t studied magic intensively.” Or had a demon as a best friend, to help pad out the knowledge of the soul. “Can’t you feel it? I said there was a shadow for a reason.”

Rose blinked as I continued.

“When you said, we were stuck in its umbra, I thought you knew.” I shivered. “We caught the gaze of the shadow.”

Rose said nothing as I continued. “Whatever it is, its more than just some fact of Innistrad, it sees us now, I can feel the touch of it linking on the back of my neck.” I allowed myself a wry smirk. “Like someone walking on my grave.”

Rose stared at me for a moment. I could see the gears turning in her head, as apprehension gave way to determination and a jovial sense of ‘well, let’s go then.’

“So what’s our plan then, captain?” she asked. “Got any big plans for us.”

“We already said it, didn’t we?” I shrugged my shoulders, turning my eyes back to the ground. “We’ll have to find the source ourselves, and hopefully we’ll manage to save ourselves along with the plane.”

Rose snorted. “If we’re lucky.”

“It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?” I said.

“True.” Rose turned back to her supplies, taking inventory of the iron, the spare bits, and the moonsilver weapons we’d salvaged. “Let’s buckle down, then.” 

I nodded. And if we didn’t manage to pull ourselves out of this mess, well, would it be any great loss?

I shook off those maudlin thoughts as the undead servitor shuffled forward, beckoning towards me. “Our host calls,” I said. “Seems its time to work on our own different projects.”

“I’ll get my bots started on refining,” she said. “It’s one of the few blueprints I made sure to remember.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

With a wave of her hand, a giant furnace materialized in the center of the tower. “Stark tec portable refinery.” Rose grinned. “Never leave home without it. There’s still a lot of waiting involved, though. I’ll make use of the time well, don’t worry.”

I allowed myself a laugh at that, before turning to go. “You do that,” I said. “I’ll make sure that Liliana is aware of our progress.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Rose give a jaunty wave as I turned to follow the undead minion back into the main body of the mansion proper.

This time, the halls were all but empty. I wondered if Liliana stored her undead in the side rooms, packed to the brim like sardines, until she needed to pull them out to make a point.

Hordes, in and of themselves, weren’t a threat to me. But even still, a massive army of disposable distractions supporting an experienced Planeswalker like Liliana Vess? It did not fill me with confidence in my own ability. One or the other, I felt I could adequately handle, or at the very least escape, but both together formed a devilish combination.

No doubt why Liliana preferred staying in her mansion. The home ground advantage was potent for our kind.

Such thoughts filled the short walk back to the throne room, where I found Liliana brooding over a crystal ball.

She said nothing as I entered, focus entirely devoted to the orb of glass which exuded an aura of blue light. Her hand rested gently, almost tentatively on an enameled box to her side.

I huffed. There wasn’t time for these power games, and so I strode forward. “What do you have for me?”

Liliana looked up, eyes still far away.

“I had thought to use your expertise with the finer details of my own project,” she said. “My original inception of a lightning rod was…inept.”

The unspoken words was that she had the knowledge to see the overall mistake in her design, without knowing exactly how to fix it. Of course, pointing that out would only get me an irritated non-sequitur at best, so I put it aside.

“You mentioned before, filtering out the harmful affects of a power source, in a way that allowed you to still make use of the energy itself.”

“Indeed.” Her gaze flicked to the box. I reached out my senses towards it, feeling the weight of…something through layers of interference.

“I thought for long on showing you this,” she said, smiling. It was not a kind expression. “It is always such a pain, scraping old acquaintances off of my shoes simply because they grew too greedy.”

I huffed. “So what changed your mind?” I asked. “Because it obviously wasn’t trust.”

“You know me well,” she said. “No, it was the utter disdain you showed towards that remarkable little spark of power.” She sighed. “I can scarcely believe any student of mine would give up power so freely, but to each their own.”

I rolled my eyes. “And if I made any noises about reconsidering, you’d next bring up the contract and how no student of yours could be so faithless.”

Liliana smirked. “Perish the thought. I fully expect any who have truly learned from me to be every bit as faithless as I am.” She met my eyes. “Though, perhaps your resistance to those ideas is what makes you useful in the first place. Tis difficult to tell.”

Before I could reply, she placed the enameled box on the table between us with a flourish. “But enough talk, we have much more important matters to attend to.”

Such as ensuring you got the last word, no doubt. Still, I found myself the slightest bit curious as to what could give Liliana so much trouble, and yet still be worth the effort of pursuing. With a delicate touch, she lifted the lid of the box revealing a length of finely wrought…chain mail?

No, I realized on a second inspection. There were clear gaps for the eyes, and lengths of chain that could only ever go around the head. It was a mask of some sort, or a veil.

And of course, bereft of the workings that kept its power muted, I could feel the malignant magic seeping from the chain like a miasma. If I craned my head, I could almost hear whispers, carried on a non-existent wind.

“What is that?” I hissed. 

“It is called the Chain Veil,” Liliana said, staring down at it longingly. “An artifact of immense power, especially to Planeswalkers. However, as you have so evidently noticed, it comes at a great cost.”

I nodded. “You were the first one who told me that there was always a cost.”

Liliana preened. “I do manage to surprise even myself at times.”

“Of course you do.” I scoffed. “Ever in a good way?”

“Bit your tongue.” But her words had little heat, and she continued without a second’s pause. “The Veil is the vessel for the shattered remnants of an ancient demon king. Simply touching it will kill most, while those of power will be corrupted into demons themselves. No doubt as the spirits within attempt to fashion themselves a more fitting host.”

“So it’s goal was to resurrect this demon?”

“Perhaps, either way, it seems that the mechanisms for the transfer of the soul itself are missing, instead, it simply tends to drive those who use it insane, while corrupting them.”

I rubbed my brow. “And next you’ll tell me that you’ve managed to use it somehow.”

“But of course.” Liliana reclined back on her throne, stretching in a decidedly catlike manner. “The curse is most troublesome, but I have found several ways to defray it, at least for a single use. Naturally, that is not nearly enough.” She pursed her lips. “I’ll not stand only being able to access my font of power in specific, arbitrary conditions.”

Well, I thought, she was nothing if not consistent. I fought down the urge to ask if she’d tried swallowing it.

“Dare I ask what these ‘arbitrary’ conditions that allowed you to use the power without suffering its drawbacks are?”

“But of course,” Liliana said, her smugness returning seven fold. “It merely requires another Planeswalker on hand, you see, so that I may pass the curse onto them instead.” She paused, before adding. “However, that only allows me access to its power a single time, so worry not, I have better uses in mind for you.”

I held back a glare, eyes flicking between the inoffensive looking mask of chain and the woman who casually told me that she could use it to curse me into a demon.

“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream to think otherwise.”

Liliana rested her cheek in her palm.

“I’ve taught you well.”

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A/N: It feels like I'm getting a bit bogged down in the interim stuff here, but don't worry, next chapter we jump right back into the thick of things with Ritz! After all, there's nothing more interesting than a nature walk through the woods!