parentless-machines - Tumblr blog

parentless-machines · 3 years ago

Text

The Compleation Logs: A Matter of Pride

(Link to Ao3 story)

- - THEN - -

Ajani thrashed in his captors’ grip. Limbs, steel-strong and many, held his arms and legs in place. His axe lay a distance away in the dirt, useless.

He could not strike back. His foes were too many in number to be out-muscled. His magic was impotent without a trusted ally to use it upon – to bolster and manifest the spirit of. These human-faced monstrosities would have been no match for such an incarnation.

But my only ally here is –

“Oh, Ajani, I wish it didn’t have to be this way...”

Tamiyo floated above him, arms spread. She was smiling, and there was something deeply wrong with that smile.

“...but it can be easier than you’re making it. Join us. Be one with us.”

She was looking at him, but her eyes were not her own. She was speaking to him, but her voice sounded tinny. Metallic.

Wrong.

“Tamiyo...what is this? Where have you taken me?”

“It’s a new day, Ajani. A dawn of promise for all the multiverse.” She drifted closer, the setting sun crowning her face with orange light. The air around Tamiyo’s body flickered, as though she was venting heat. “I want you, my dear friend, to be with me to see the first rays of this new morning.”

Ajani paused in his struggle a moment. His captors forced him fully on to his knees, holding him there, but pushing no further.

“What are you talking about?”

“Join us, Ajani. We want you willing. None should be one with us unless they truly desire it.”

“Tamiyo. You’re not making sense.”

“The alternative is death,” she continued, carrying on as though he hadn’t spoken. “I don’t think either of us want that, but...”

She gestured, and the grip on Ajani’s limbs tightened.

“Stop this!” He tried to tug an arm free, but they only squeezed him harder in response. “We’re friends! You’ve welcomed me into your home. I’ve eaten at your table!”

“You are like family to me, Ajani.” One of the scrolls at her hip was glowing with an unearthly shimmer, like a desert mirage, or oil in the water. “That is why I offer you the choice. We can twist your flesh and make you in our image by force, but we want you willing. As whole as you can possibly be.”

“Twist my…?” Ajani glanced down at the hands holding his leg. Meaty. Muscled. Human, except for the dark, wiry tendrils sprouting from the forearm and reinforcing the grip.

Twisted.

What have they done to my friend?

What do they plan to do to me?

- - ANOTHER TIME - -

Ajani hated to see Tamiyo this way.

She’d plainly been crying, for one, and she was never one to cry easily. Tears marked her cheeks and her travel-worn garments. Tears stained the delicate sheet of cloud-patterned fabric beneath them.

A modest meal had been set out between them on a small traveling-table, in the Kamigawan style. They sat kneeling across the table from each other, neither having spoken yet, beyond a few initial words of greeting.

In the near distance, an encampment was underway. Workers pitched tents, set fires, dug waste pits. A few children played in the field around them, laughing and chasing each other through the knee-high grass.

The day was fine, which made his friend’s sad state all the sorrier.

“I’m glad to see you, Ajani.” Even Tamiyo’s voice, despite her efforts at a stoic front, sounded rough; as though she’d been sobbing of late. “How are you?”

“It’s been too long.” He tore his eyes from the camp to meet hers. “I’m well...and longing to hear of your latest travels.” He nodded at the table. “and I feel blessed that your hospitality travels with you, as ever.”

She managed small laugh. “I thought you might be hungry. I’m a bit out of practice with my cookery, but I hope it’s to your liking.”

“That...I appreciate it, Tamiyo.” He plucked up kettle from a stone slab at the table’s center. He poured himself a cup. The steam that rose up was strong and bittersweet, just as he remembered it. “Where have your studies taken you?” He moved to fill her cup.

“None for me.” She placed two fingers over the rim of her teacup. “I just missed...missed the act of setting out places.”

“You’ve not been home lately?” Ajani looked up from his tea. “Your recent travels must have been engaging.”

“They’ve been...exciting. Really quite exciting.” A smile began on her face as she said it. “I have a new project underway. Effects of rapidly emerging celestial bodies on extant close-proximity satellites.”

“Sounds fascinating. And complicated?”

She nodded, smile broadening. “Immensely so. Increasingly important work in this brave new multiverse of ours.”

“And you’ve been staying well? You and the family?”

“Mm.” Tamiyo nodded, but her smile had gone tight. “Of course, as well as...as well as I could hope for.”

Ajani set his tea down, untasted. “Please, Tamiyo. I’m overjoyed to see you but...what is troubling you?”

“It’s been a difficult time.” Her eyes left his to track across the table. “Genku is angry with me, I think.”

“You think?”

“He’s usually so understanding,” She sniffed. “But this work now...I think he disapproves? Maybe that it’s taken me away from him and the children for longer than usual?”

Ajani nodded. “Did he not say why he was angry?”

She shook her head.

“Did the children have any idea? Rumi or Nashi or-”

“He would not let me see the children.”

Ajani’s first response caught in his throat. “That...that was cruel of him.” Ajani glanced behind Tamiyo. The children had crept closer, whispering amongst themselves. One of them waved at him, and he nodded back. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

Tamiyo shook her head. “It’s because he cares about them. I don’t know if he believes that I still care about them, having been absent for such a time-” a sob cut across her voice, and she coughed on it “-we have different ideas about what’s good for them, but...but-”

She shook her head, and her brow furrowed.

“I’ve not seen my children in months, Ajani” She looked up at him, frustration writ clear on her face. “But it’s important, the research I do. There’s tremendous good that comes out of it. It’s not a responsibility I can or will neglect.”

“Your children love you, no matter how much time you have to be away from them.” Ajani whispered. Words usually helped, he knew, but they felt inadequate now. “You have a husband who loves you, despite what...rash things he might do. You have colleagues who respect you.” He paused, and held out a paw. “Friends who cherish you.”

She put her hand in his. It was cold to the touch, but the feeling of his friend’s fingers was still a comfort.

“And I cherish you. I hope you know that, Ajani. We’re family.”

More tears slid down her cheeks. It turned Ajani’s stomach to see.

“Of course. Some times are trying, Tamiyo. But trying times can pass. Genku...” Ajani shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tamiyo. I don’t mean to trivialize this. I think Genku...how do I put this?”

“You understand where he’s coming from?” Tamiyo forced a smile, though more tears rolled down her cheeks as she did so.

“You’ve been away a long while, Tamiyo. Long even for you.” Ajani paused, considering his next words. “We take danger with us from world to world, planeswalkers. Consider for a moment that Genku is concerned the danger your travels may bring to the children I know you both love dearly.”

A distraught grimace twisted Tamiyo’s mouth.

“I’d hoped for more comforting words from you.”

Ajani nodded, eyes cast back down at the table. “I’m truly sorry. But I know in the end you appreciate truth, not evasion.”

“And yet...I think you’re still being evasive.”

He laughed. There was not a shred of mirth in it. “That I am. Forgive me; I'm not quite sure what to say.”

Tamiyo nodded, then drew in a breath as she straightened her back to kneel more formally. Another sob brought her head forward, and a few more tears trailing down her cheeks, but she mastered herself, and wiped the tears away.

“I’m sorry. I am happy to see you. Honestly.”

“I know you are. You don’t have to apologize.” He looked up at the rolling fields around them. The wildflowers made a subtle riot of color among the waving grasses. “I’m happy we could find each other on such a lovely day.”

Tamiyo nodded.

“And you said...you had something you wished to discuss?”

“Yes,” Tamiyo perked up, just slightly. “But food first. There’s no need to talk on an empty stomach.”

- - THEN - -

“Well, Ajani?” Tamiyo’s voice echoed horribly through the air. “Do I have your attention? Your interest?”

Ajani craned his head around to look sidelong at one of his captors. They stared back with black, glassy eyes. They had surely been human once, as all of them had been, but were now made into something darker. Something unnatural.

He tore his gaze away to glare at Tamiyo "I find your friends interesting, Tamiyo. Strange company you keep these days."

She tsk-ed. "I know you of all my friends, Ajani, wouldn't judge a book by its cover. These are elevated beings. We are all meant to be one in flesh, but the flesh must be made ready first, so that we can all be one in glory."

Stall for time. The situation was grim, but Tamiyo’s companions seemed content to restrain him for the moment, rather than kill him. Keep her talking.

“I’ve had a revelation in my travels.” Tamiyo smiled broadly. “A revelation I wish to share with all my fellow ‘walkers behind the air, that we might spread the wisdom I have found and so make all the multiverse one.”

Ajani stared at her. “Become...what does that mean, Tamiyo?”

“That I wish for all of us who walk between worlds to bring the multiverse together as one-” She smiled like he was meant to understand her words.

“What. Does. That. Mean?” Ajani looked her dead in the eye. You’re a scholar, Tamiyo. A learner and a teacher. I’ve always valued that about you. So tell me why.”

Tamiyo cocked her head. Her eyes, already glowing, pulsed blue and purple.

“Well?”

She watched him a moment longer, and nodded.

“Yes...yes, that’s fair. You deserve that. Understanding will make you agreeable to unity. To our love.”

Ajani let his body hang in the grip of his captors. The hold on his limbs remained tight, but they ceased in pushing him further down.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Tamiyo floated forward and patted him, lightly, across his forehead. Even that faint caress made his fur crawl. “My friends can be gentle. It turns out we were wrong, Ajani. All of us who thought them a scourge on the planes. It’s a family, Ajani. Viscerally, you may reject them, and I understand. I rejected them too, at first. But now that I’ve opened my mind and my heart.”

Her mind. Her heart. Ajani willed his muscles not to tense up. Tamiyo’s greatest assets. How were they not defense enough against this…this madness?

Behind the milky, flickering glow of her eyes, the outline of iris and pupil remained, if one looked close enough.

And might they still serve to save her now?

“Tamiyo, you are not in your right mind.”

“Untrue. My mind has never known a greater clarity. I see the bigger picture now, Ajani, and it is you who lacks a complete perspective.”

Then she leaned forward, and said something Ajani could not understand.

- - ANOTHER TIME - -

“How does it taste?”

Ajani paused, teacup halfway to his mouth. A small bowl of cold noodles lay partially-finished in front of him, besides a plate of braised fish, similarly only halfway-eaten.

“It’s...excellent, Tamiyo. Truly.” It was delicious, circumstances notwithstanding. Tamiyo had a deft hand with seasoning, and she had found a local fish that made a fine substitute to kamigawan carp. “It’s just that my appetite hasn’t found me. You did not have to go to all this effort, but I thank you.”

Tamiyo laughed, the sound so genuine and joyful amidst her tears that Ajani’s heart rose. “You are worth it. Any of my family are worth the effort.”

Ajani gestured at her teacup, untouched. “And...are you sure you do not wish to…?”

She waved a hand. “I couldn’t.”

Ajani nodded, and took a sip. The tea was bitter, refreshing, and tasted clean, so he drained the rest of it in a long, slow draught.

“Wonderful. Thank you.”

Tamiyo turned, staring off at the distance. Beyond the rolling fields of wildflowers behind her, the hills rose in sweeping slopes.

“Do you ever feel that our travels have changed us on some undefinable level? That the years have made us different?”

Ajani regarded Tamiyo. “I think we both know they have. The recent months more so than the others.”

Tamiyo laughed again. “The past few months haven’t been at all what I expected. They’ve been hard in ways I knew they’d be, but they’ve been exciting in ways I never could have dreamed. The things I’ve learned, Ajani...” She smiled, excited. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m gathering walkers, like us. Open-minded travelers of the multiverse to pool what we see and know of the planes for the greater good.”

“Hm.” Ajani set down his cup, raising an eyebrow at Tamiyo as he did so. “I can see the wisdom of that.”

“I thought you might!” She smiled, and there was something hungry in the way she grinned.

“I did think we were doing something like that already,” Ajani ventured. “Our story circle being, as it was, a gathering of the minds-”

Tamiyo waved her hand again, dismissively. “That was one thing. Useful and interesting, certainly, But hardly focused.” She fixed him with a serious look. “I envision something grander still. The multiverse is a dangerous place, Ajani, and becoming more so every day. I believe that, together, we can make serious progress toward making it safe for all.”

“You were never much one for intervention; didn’t you have something rather biting you used to say about self-proclaimed ‘heroes?’”

“I’ve reconsidered.” She sniffed once, wiping the corner of her eye, but there was a replenishing resolve about her. “The time to be passive has ended. The time to take action is now.”

Ajani fought the urge to look over his shoulder. “To what end?”

She shrugged. “Ends to be determined. Making a better multiverse doesn’t have a single solution. It will require constant work. The problems of Kamigawa are not the problems of Innistrad are not the problems of Regatha.” She paused, cocking her head. “Excepting, of course, threats like Bolas or the Eldrazi titans. But the small problems deserve addressing just as much as the large.”

“Agreed...”

She grimaced. “There’s a ‘but’ coming, I take it.”

“But still I wonder at the ends. Who are you...who are any of us to say what is best?”

"Those of us who know most are in the best position to guess the way forward. But I take your point," Tamiyo said, nodding. "And I understand you have reservations. That said, I hope you trust my judgment."

"You've been an open ear and a wise word to me all the years I've known you," Ajani said, choosing his words carefully.

"But you don't trust me on this matter," Tamiyo interrupted.

"You understand why I might hesitate."

"I do." Tamiyo smiled with her mouth. Her eyes mourned. She began to say something more, glanced behind Ajani, and fell silent.

"Well...it looks like we don't have any more time at the moment." A brief look of worry flitted across her face, but she shook her head, and the smile came back. "Think about it please, Ajani. I think we can do great things together."

And then she was up and floating away, calling out to some of the children to gather up the table and food.

Ajani waited until he was sure she was out of earshot, then let out a breath he’d felt he’d been holding in for hours. As he gasped, he could feel his eyes filling with tears. Hot, angry, desperate tears that rolled down his cheeks onto the cloth.

Tamiyo’s own tears had soiled the blanket where she’d been kneeling, the oil staining the fabric black and brown.

A whisper came at his ear.

“Isn’t she a wonder?”

- - THEN - -

“We’rakul”

Tamiyo said the word as if it were something profound, and not chilling, alien nonsense.

“We’rakul,” she said again. “And you’mrakould be one with us, if only you embraced her.”

Ajani held absolutely still, as if spellbound. He allowed himself the smallest nod

The eldrazi spawn holding down his limbs were focused on her, the ones who still had human heads nodding eagerly along with him.

And loosened their grip a degree further.

Ajani ripped his left hand free first, flinging a tentacled vampire several yards to skid in the dirt. With a roar, he lunged forward, slipping his left leg free of a burly human, whose chest and legs were little more than webs of tangled, eldritch flesh.

The others tightened their grip, but Ajani lashed out with his free claws. Whatever they were transforming into, the eldrazi-spawn-people felt enough pain that they released him, screeching in pain. He shook of the last of them and lunged away, towards Tamiyo.

“No. No!” Tamiyo’s eyes glowed. The scroll glowed, and another eldrazi leapt from it, this one a woman wielding a farmer’s scythe, fused with the strips of flesh her arm had become. She swung the weapon at Ajani, who seized the stringy shaft of the thing and flung her aside.

Tamiyo was floating backwards, her fingers groping for another of the scrolls at her hip. Ajani pursued, leaving his axe and caution behind him. The spawn shrieked and howled close behind, in hot pursuit.

“Tamiyo, you must stop this!”

“We’rakul!” She bellowed, brandishing a scroll. Her fingers moved to undo the seal of the steely cylinder.

Ajani grit his teeth, and reached out to Tamiyo with his magic. Ripples like sunlight in the golden hour flowed from his paws to envelop here.

“Ajani? What are you-”

He reached within. She was a soul of sensibility and soul of logic and skepticism. He knew she still was, and if he could only amplify that…

Tamiyo’s eyes went wide. Then, for a moment, Ajani saw the color return to them. The irises, sharp and glinting.

“Ajani?!”

There.

A cerulean flame ignited across her brow; the manifestation of her keen senses and intellectual curiosity. These qualities had been straining to break free, but there was something within suppressing them – a dull, unquestioning lattice of delusion. It was no match for her mind given magical form. She ripped through the mental restraints and, with the fire of her mind and soul, burned them away.

“Ajani!”

She pointed behind him. He whirled, catching one of the leaping eldrazi spawn in his claws, and ripped it out of the air, dashing its head against the ground. Another he simply battered in the chest with his elbow. Tamiyo sent her soul-fire screaming at the remaining spawn. A roaring cone of blue flame pressed them to the dirt. In a moment, they were nothing but vapor.

Ajani pinned the last of the creatures clinging to him on the ground. Its tendrils grasped at his forearm, its bulging, pulsing face radiated menace. He smashed that face in with his fist, and it dissipated into dust, like crumble parchment.

He panted, releasing breath in ragged gasps. His arms stung, and his heart was racing, but all around the eldrazi creatures were dissolving into powder, then into nothing at all.

“I’m sorry.”

Tamiyo was on her knees in the dust, a scroll held tight in her fist. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t...I shouldn’t have...”

“You’re okay.” Ajani took her gingerly by the shoulder. “You’re okay. They’re gone. If there are more, we’ll find them, but for now-”

Tamiyo shook her head. She was holding the scroll tightly, like it might leap up and bite her at any moment. Ajani reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers gently. She gasped, and loosened her grip on the thing.

“There won’t be more. I only summoned these ones...” She swallowed. “There were only a few in the story.”

A chill scuttled down Ajani’s back. “The story?”

She pinched the edge of the scroll, and let it drop from her hands. It unrolled, revealing a long, illustrated ream of script. The page was illustrated with the same creatures that had held him, parodies of humans, a face stretched across a starfish body, an old woman with a dozen many-jointed limbs.

And above them all, a soaring peak that defied sanity, pouring out a web of impossible geometries onto a crowd beneath a silvery moon.

“Emrakul.”

- - ANOTHER TIME - -

“So much like the incompleat she moves and acts, and even feels. Yet pound for pound she is still phyrexian through and through, even more so than most of my sleepers. Jin is a master of his craft.”

Sheoldred’s breath was neither hot nor cold, but there was some quality to it that made the skin on Ajani’s face squirm, as if burrowing insects were trying to wriggle their way out of it.

“I’d like to think I had a hand in it. I told Jin once, you know, that the mirrans would come to compleation quicker if they understood...if they saw that they need not sacrifice all the things they like best about themselves to have the sort of power we offer.”

She paused there. Ajani was troubled to find the irritation to his skin did not abate with her voice.

“We’ll kill her, of course, should you decline our gift of perfection.” Sheoldred’s whisper came closer now; like cold water dripping across Ajani’s ear. “Her and the meat she calls her children. Promises were made when we brought her into the fold, but we need you now more than we want her, and Phyrexia will not be beholden to promises that hold us back.”

Ajani’s knuckles tensed. He felt he might break his own hands, so tightly was he clenching them.

“Jin will not like it,” Sheoldred continued. “He’s wonderfully detached, but deceit does not come naturally to him; He thinks he’s...better than it.” She laughed. “But Phyrexia is not sentimental. Forward, forward, always forward. Perfection does not second guess. Perfection does not let principles shackle it. Perfection-”

“Why?”

Sheoldred paused. Ajani couldn’t see her face, but could hear her drawing breath.

“Why what?”

“Why all this...show?" Ajani asked. "Why show her to me?”

“So you understand the score, obviously. You planeswalk away. You resist. You act against me in any manner, and she dies. And suffers quite a bit before then, if it needs to be said.”

“You had me already. Unconscious and helpless. Why didn’t you do your grim work then?”

“Consent, planeswalker. It needs to be you who agrees to let us make you perfect.” There was distaste in Sheoldred’s voice as she said it. “We need you, but we need you whole. Spark and soul intact. The compleation process can’t retain the planeswalker’s spark if the soul is unwilling.”

“Then I refuse. Obviously.” Ajani nodded at Tamiyo. “She wouldn’t want me to do something so foolish. Not even for her. Not when she...when she was in her right mind.”

“She agreed,” Sheoldred was smiling. It was obvious from her voice alone. “She came to us willing. She saw there was something of value to what Phyrexia can offer the worlds beyond. Do you not trust her judgment? Do you think she would have acquiesced if she thought death the better option?”

Ajani had no answer. His mouth felt dry.

“Do you truly think her that stupid?”

She’s lying. It’s just words. Whatever words she can think of to fool you into their trap.

But it’s true. Tamiyo is smarter than that.

“This is as much carrot as it is stick.” A hand, unsettlingly human, crept over Ajani’s shoulder, the fingers stroking his fur. “You see that what we offer is still fundamentally you, just as she is still fundamentally her.”

“You’ve muddied her mind.”

“Semantics,” Sheoldred hissed. “We’ve added to her perspective. Widened it, not narrowed. She knows us intimately now, and with wider perception she has reassessed her ambitions. Was this not a rational act on her part?”

The hand ran up from shoulder to neck, and laced through the fur of his mane.

“You think of compleation as death. This is a common mis-judgement of the imperfect.” Sheoldred’s other hand stroked his cheek, with a gentleness he had not expected. “We do not destroy the body, we refine it. We do not kill the mind, we teach it. You will be what you are now, and more. That you will believe in the mission of Phyrexia is simply the result of an ordered mind. You think us a poison now; there will be no shame in changing your mind when you experience our caress and know better.”

Ajani shook his head. “It’s not knowing you describe. Just belief. Belief is nothing. A tyrant believes themself righteous. You believe yourself perfect.”

Sheoldred patted his shoulder. “Very well. I offer you belief, if not knowledge. Do you find that so much worse than death?”

Perhaps.

Ajani dared a look back, turning to stare over the shoulder where Sheoldred was not. He could see the many-legged coils of her body, festooning the hills. Razor-lined limbs poised and ready to rend or restrain him. A woman stood at Sheoldred’s side, eyes fixed on her, seemingly intent on her every whispered word. From the woman's demeanor she could have been Sheoldred's attendant, lieutenant, or chaperon. She caught Ajani's eye, and gave him a cold smile.

Red glinted behind her left eye.

Sharks. Ajani turned away. My friend is caught in the midst of sharks.

Tamiyo had drifted back to the main encampment. She was in animated conversation with one of the camp guards, and a laugh passed between them. There was a final, unreadable glance back at Ajani, a wave, and then she busied herself with the children, directing them to pack away the traveling table and cloth.

Ajani wondered at the diversity of the encampment. Kor and human. Goblin and elf. Minotaur, eumidean, chelonian, even. There was no division by appearance here. No partitioning of this collective along cultural lines.

You’d have thought them a well-integrated coalition camp. Until one of the fire-tenders’ arms split open to carry an additional log from the wood-pile. Until one of the children, playing with a companion, split her face open to reveal a pitch-black skeletal face underneath. If not for the casualness with which they deployed additional limbs of wire and steel, it might have been a vision of unity. If not for the blatantly modified among them, going about their business with tanks grafted into their shoulders, or spines reinforced with visible cables, the encampment would have been the very vision of intercultural egalitarity.

Even more than that, the mundanity of their activities was unsettling. The fire-tending. The tent-pitching. The idle chatter as the laborers milled about. The laughter. The smiles.

“The first father of machines was flawed in many ways, and it is still heresy to speak of his shortcomings as such.” Amusement tinged Sheoldred’s words. “But between us friends, he saw the world as a lab full of rats, to prod and peel and stitch into whatever shape best fit his designs. Our new Phyrexia sees siblings. We see kinsfolk in the making, who stand to gain from unity with us. We accept that the wants of the individual are many, and so rather than force the individual to surrender what they want most, we show them how what they want most is, in fact, to be found in compleation.”

She let the words hang a moment. Back among the tents, Tamiyo was now corralling the children in a space near the cook’s clearing. For a lesson, perhaps.

“The ineffable failed in part because he had no regard for the want of others. His phyrexia could only take, as an abductor takes a child in the night. It had no recourse against want but to kill, and you cannot kill all the people every time. Belbe the Kingmaker wanted love, Xantcha the Outlier wanted autonomy. Phyrexia denied them these things and in seeking them out they became as ruinous to the designs of Phyrexia as any walker of old.”

Tamiyo was brilliant. Logical, but more than that…

There is a compassion and a genuine care for others that shapes her actions. Her choices. If she took a risk, it must have been guided by...

“What do you want of life? Whatever it is, I guarantee it is to be had among the perfect. Autonomy? We offer unparalleled power with which to seize your own destiny. Companionship? You will know a unity of purpose among the compleat that surpasses all bonds of kinship and love.”

Love.

Ajani stared after Tamiyo, still fretting over the children. Over these monsters. They had twisted her love, but the love was still there.

The love is worth protecting.

“The time to decide is now, planeswalker. The unification of worlds waits for no man. Or cat.”

And who here will protect it, if not me?

- - THEN - -

“I collected their story.”

Tamiyo’s stare was unblinking. The flames that devoured the scroll before them reflected in her eye as flickering fangs of light. Ajani had thought that stare cold once, when they’d first met. Dispassionate. But there was a curiosity there always. The inquisitive warmth of a truth-seeker.

“A story about the eldrazi?”

She lifted her head and dropped it in the ghost of a nod. “About their attack on Innistrad. I knew Emrakul was dangerous, but the story-spells have always been just that, stories. Dangerous to unleash, of course, but safe enough to keep. And the most dangerous ones...” She did not touch her satchel, but the hand nearest to it twitched in the corner of Ajani’s eye. “...they stay put unless I call on them. They’re supposed to stay put.”

“Right.” Ajani threw a dry branch onto the fire, atop the scroll. They were seated side-by-side on the trunk of a fallen tree, the heat of their small campfire warding off the creeping chill of the woods. “And this one?”

“I underestimated Emrakul. I underestimated her nature. She controlled me on Innistrad, and I didn’t even realize that she was still in my head...that even a...a story about her contained enough of her essence that she could release herself through it. Manipulate me through it.”

Ajani nodded. “It does sound unprecedented. Not something you could have predicted.”

Tamiyo shivered. Night had fallen while they built the fire, and a cool wind was drifting through the woods. “She frightens me. Frightens me like nothing I’ve encountered face-to-face ever has. She truly believes herself benevolent and wonderful, and I...I felt her hurt and confusion when the planes didn’t welcome her as such. It was an earnest confusion, like a child’s, and it’s nothing short of miraculous she moved to contain herself rather than lash out.”

“Is Innistrad still in danger? Should we investigate what she might be scheming?”

Tamiyo shook her head. “Emrakul wants...she genuinely wants us to embrace her of our own volition, as much as an eldritch titan can be said to want anything the way you or I might. She’ll remain where she is for know. I hope. I will initiate research, but cautiously.” She gestured toward the scroll, now a twisting coil of blackened ashes. “The mere idea of her must be treated with care.”

Then she was crying.

Ajani hated to see her that way.

But tears are needed from time to time.

He offered his arm, and she leaned beside him in a half-hug.

“I failed, Ajani. I only meant to investigate. To learn. I think I may have made things worse, and I don’t even know how.”

Ajani pulled his cape over his shoulder to wrap around her. She pulled the corner over her own shoulder, still shaking.

A bit more rest for both of us, then we’d best depart.

Tamiyo shifted against him. He glanced down, to see if she was comfortable. Tears, clear and silvery, trailed along her cheeks. Here eyes were still on the fire.

Ajani patted her shoulder. “You’re a scholar, aren’t you?”

“...you know I am,” she whispered.

“Well, you’re meant to learn. And we have learned something today. No one’s hurt. And we’re applying-” he gestured at the flames, “that is, we’re taking action based on what we learned. Maybe there was a lesson here today that helps us confront Emrakul tomorrow. That’s what being a scholar is about, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Tamiyo snorted. A laugh that was barely a puff of air through her nostrils. “Hard lessons. I’m horribly used to them by now.”

Ajani offered a paw. “Will you let me carry some of that for you?”

“You already do, my dear friend.” Tamiyo lay a hand on Ajani’s palm. “Thank you.’

- - NOW - -

“Look at you. You can hardly tell. See? Nothing to fret about.”

Tamiyo drifted around Ajani, prodding gently at his jaw and brow. “Compleat and you’d never know it.”

Ajani was keenly aware of the changes beneath his skin. He saw only himself in the chrome mirror, but it was an Ajani profoundly changed below the surface. He felt more awake. Stronger. His sense of balance felt oddly keen.

It did not feel bad, necessarily, but it did not feel comfortable either.

Rona stood a distance behind them, cleaning her tools with a slow deliberation. Her smile still seemed cold to Ajani, but it had occurred to him as she had worked that coldness of expression was simply how some presented their faces to the world. Coldness could still contain passion, and she was passionate about her craft. Her part in Sheoldred’s design. She spoke of the praetor constantly, like a cub speaks of their first love. She never smiled with her mouth, but there had been a blazing delight in her eyes as she worked.

Both of them.

“We’ll have to wipe your mind clean of the knowledge of your time here, of course.” A look of concern flitted across Tamiyo’s face. “You will think that you are the incompleat Ajani, at least for a while. But for the greater good; all the other sleeping ones are the same. Don’t worry. All you sleepers will awaken to a paradise of unity and enlightenment.”

He nodded. Other sleepers had been through this chamber while they’d worked on him. Those already modified to go out into Dominaria in the guise of the incompleat.

He’d watched others be put into the sleep of forgetfulness. The sleep where they dreamed they were not of Phyrexia, but still living their lives long past. The secret of the sleepers' presence was well and out, and full war against the invasion was underway, but it seemed Sheoldred and Rona still had use for undercover assets.

Ajani had expected some underground lair where the phyrexians would be conducting these grim preparations. Some pit under the earth like Karn had described. In fact, they performed his enhancements right there in the encampment; a staging ground on some unmonitored island off the coast of Tamingazin.

That had been the first surprise.

Then there had been the well-wishers. The operating tent was at all times full of sleepers coming through for repairs, modifications, and other small operations less time consuming than his own. Rona even allowed the compleated children into the tent, and they took use of the liberty often, to come and ask questions of one who ‘would walk from world to world to bind them together for Phyrexia.’

Rona’s words.

He had expected to be treated as an oddity by these phyrexians. A scientific curiosity. He got that feeling from Rona, certainly, with her gaze that seemed to see the muscles moving under his fur even before his skin was laid open.

But from the others who passed through there was encouragement. Congratulations. Excitement about the endeavor that was being thrust upon him. Pats on the shoulder as Rona prepped her equipment. Words of understanding and courage once she had commenced her vexing work, and declared he was not to be touched.

There was community and a sense of belonging thereto.

And Tamiyo was safe among them, at least for now.

He knew better than to trust fully how he felt in that moment, filled as he was with their oil. Their black steel. Staying guarded in mind and soul was paramount now, but he allowed himself a spark of hope.

“Are you ready?”

Tamiyo touched his elbow. He glanced down at her.

“I know it’s scary, but it’s only for a while. Only while we need to hide what we are.”

Ajani put a paw over her hand

“I’m ready.”

Whatever they had added to him, the base Ajani, he, remained. He who would die for his friends, and who doubted still the agenda of his captors, willing a captive though he was.

The platform at his back tilted, and brought him back to horizontal.

Rona stepped forward, a many-jointed probe strapped onto her left arm. “There will be some significant discomfort at first.”

Ajani grit his teeth, but nodded.

“Would you like a story?” Tamiyo’s hand was still at his elbow.

“That would be wonderful. Thank you, Tamiyo.”

I am Ajani. I am steadfast. There is nothing they can put inside me that would change that.

“There was a child once, born with a condition for which her people had no word, no treatment, and precious little understanding.”

Rona rolled her eye at the tale, but allowed Tamiyo to stand across the operating table from her without comment.

“This condition did not make the girl more or less than her community, simply different. But in being different, she was not understood. In nor being understood, every time her condition caused inconvenience for others, she was treated as unreasonable. Troublesome. A burden.”

A cold needle slipped behind his ear. A machine somewhere behind him crackled with tangible energy.

I am Ajani. I am steadfast. Nothing will change me.

"Her family loved her. She had friends, even. But always the difference between her and the others of her community caused a great friction, a tremendous stress in her every day, that in turn caused friction for her family, and her friends, such that she could never truly separate her existence from her condition."

Ajani blinked. Where was he?

I am Ajani. I am steadfast.

"Then there came to the child's world a culture of travelers, and among them a kindly physician, who saw the village and its inability to care properly for those with afflictions they did not understand.”

He was in a tent. Had he been hurt?

I am Ajani.

“The physician and his people were a culture of great understanding, and so, they took all the people of the village and made them as one. Removed deficiencies, modified weaknesses. And all people have weaknesses, whether their society accepts them or not.”

Where were Teferi and Jaya and Karn and Jhoira? Were his friends alright? Had they been hurt as well...?

I am steadfast.

“And so were all the people of the village made the same. The girl. Her family. The entirety of their community. And in being the same, they understood each other. and in understanding each other, they found a harmony of existence unmatched in all the multiverse.”

Tamiyo was at his side, her voice calm as she told the most charming story. Hadn’t he been looking for her for months now?

I am Ajani. I am...

“They had become, as we will all be in time -”

I am…

“-one"

“A Matter of Pride” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

29 notes · View notes