Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum (35 page)

N
issa Revine walked toe-to-heel along the rope that lead to the Joraga council sling. The other rope, the only other way to get to the council sling, the main meeting place of her tribe where the young elves were born and raised, was full of other Joraga walking easily to the meeting. Even though it took a bit more time to navigate the many trapeze ropes that joined her tribe’s meeting slings and sleeping pods, Nissa knew that the advantages outweighed their inconveniences. They could be cut easily in a siege. And vampires, despite their stealthy quickness, had trouble with prolonged balance. Such knowledge, discovered by her Joraga forbearers, and paid for in blood, had saved her tribe more than once. So Nissa was glad to slow down and walk carefully along the rope to the meeting sling.

Of course, the trapeze lines would not hinder brood lineage or the Eldrazi titans in the least, Nissa thought as she watched the few remaining Joraga make their way to the meeting.

When she got to the sling, she followed the other Joraga inside and strode to the front bench. Unlike a Tajuru council meeting, the assembled Joraga did not speak. Outside council they were loud and vulgar,
unless hunting. Strangely, she found herself missing the Tajuru prattle … the inane jokes and hushed giggles.

Nissa raised her hands and all eyes were on her. There were not that many eyes Nissa noticed with a sudden pang in her stomach. Most of the seats stood empty.
Was this really it, all the Joraga left?
They did not even fill half of the sling.

“It falls to me,” Nissa said. “To tell you we have word of the scourge, at the Slim Blade.”

Nissa imagined the Slim Blade, that tongue of land where two famous rivers met—a place at the western edge of Joraga territory. She listened for the response to this news. As usual there were no significant sounds. But that did not mean there was joy in the crowd. She heard a very slight intake of breath from two elves in the front row. That could only mean exasperation and fear—two emotions that were expressly forbidden in the sling or anywhere else in the Joraga rule.

“Half will go,” Nissa said, simply. “… with the bags. As your leader, I will be one of those going.” She lowered her arms, turned and walked out of the sling. The rest of the Joraga waited until she had left and then filed out without a sound. On the planks that encircled the sling Nissa broke their number to half and all made their way to the supply sling.

Soon her time as leader would be over, Nissa thought as she waited in line with the other Joraga, and she already knew what she would do.

Nissa took one of the bags from the supply chief. She slung it over her shoulder. It was not a heavy thing after all, and she and the twenty Joraga began their walk to the west. As she walked the contents of the bag shifted and jiggled. She liked that.

The trip took two days. Nissa could not help but notice that such a trip would have taken a Tajuru double the time as they walked along their foolish branches and took needless breaks. None of this was done by the Joraga. They walked on the ground, unafraid. And food was eaten once per day, before their short nap at daybreak.

At the head of her squad, Nissa’s job was to notice everything in the jungle. She did this. But as her eyes flitted from movement to movement, she found herself seeing a certain humanoid shape in every shadow. They always dissipated after she blinked her eyes. But it was unmistakably the same form every time.
Anowon
. She’d left the vampire outside of Affa, tied up and buried to his neck in the sandy soil. She’d left him with a stern warning: follow and die. A new stem sword was being grown back at the sling, but until then Nissa kept an arrow nocked on her bow string at all times.

She wished she had to worry about Sorin visiting. Once Anowan was dealt with, she tried to follow Sorin, but his trail was too fragmented. She had planeswalked through the Eternities and found his first couple of stops on rocky, seemingly abandoned planes. On another plane where every surface was as the surface of a pristine pond, she found an old human who said he had seen a white-haired stranger. But that was all. The thin, trail left when individuals walked through the æther had dissipated too much to be followed, and Nissa eventually gave up her search.

She would try again.

She would ask Sorin to come back and re-imprison the menace she had unleashed on Zendikar. He had not told her what would happen if they were set free. She had not understood fully. Now Sorin simply
had
to come back and set things right. The outbreak was simply too large for her to deal with alone.

Suddenly Nissa stopped. A far off movement in the undergrowth made her drop into a crouch. After a second a bird flew out, and she straightened and started walking again.

Then the Joraga were at the site of devastation, which looked very much like all the others. The edge of the destruction started when Nissa began to notice the plants of the jungle looked sick, yellowish. As they walked further the plants withered to a dark brown, and the immense nula trees were seen toppled to the ground. Then it got bad. Nissa and the other Joraga found themselves walking through a land of almost total ruin extending on all sides for as far as they could see. Wide swaths of dirt were trenched and plowed up to reveal dead roots, which appeared to reach for the wrecked and brooding sky.

Nissa never understood how
they
got at the sky. But every new wasteland had the same orange and gray sky. And always the same plants, stamped to ooze. Only the bare tree trunks, dripping themselves away, stood as stark jags on the dark landscape.

What was left of the elf bodies was worse. Inevitably there were bodies, although they were hard to find. The Joraga who had tried to stop the desecration of the land had paid for their fidelity with their lives. Nissa stopped and looked down at one of the blackened husks that could have been a section of tree trunk. She knew it was the body of one of her kinsmen by the tarnished armband.

“Eldrazi scourge,” the Joraga next to her hissed. Nissa jerked around and struck the male across the face, snapping his head sideways.

“No,” she said. “Never
that
word.” In the quiet that
followed, the waste seemed to echo with the word Eldrazi. Nissa turned her ear up to the wind, hoping not to hear movement. She could detect none, but that did not mean
they
were not hunching in some hole out there.

She slung the bag from her shoulder. “Let us start.”

As she slit the threads to open the bag, she felt the total lack of life in the land.
The leach. They
had come and sucked every bit of mana out of the land, and they would come back. But in the meantime the Joraga could perhaps do something to heal the damage.

She spread the opening of the bag and felt the mana flood out and break over her face. It was such a welcome feeling in this wasteland. She reached in, took a handful of the seed, all of different sizes, textures, and colors. Enough variety of seed to make again the jungle forests of Bala Ged. In the palm of her hand she saw huge tramba seeds as large as her thumb, and the power-sized seeds of the creeping plants whose name she did not know. There were plenty of seeds she did not know. But she closed her fist around them all and waited.

Nissa knew that she was just the person to do the planting. Unlike the other Joraga, her magic was still strong, despite the Eldrazi. Her strong mana lines stretched to the different planes she’d visited, allowed her to grow these plants better than any in her tribe could.

As soon as the other Joraga had a similar handful of seed Nissa began the growth song. It was an old song, and she sang it as she had been singing it her whole life.
They
may come again, Nissa thought. Or
they
may flee Zendikar tomorrow, but right now the forest would be made anew.

Nissa drew her fist back.

She would travel the planes until she found Sorin and others who would help bind the Eldrazi once again. She alone among her people could do this, and save Zendikar from the gathering darkness. For the first time her planeswalking skill would help her people.

“I am of those that walk the Blind Eternities,” Nissa said, throwing out the seed.