I remember it looked at me with too many eyes. It saw too much. And when it opened its mouth, and it pulled me in, I was pulled in every direction at once. It was the opposite of gravity and though there was no light to see I saw time. But something exploded inside of me in that moment and suddenly light and time became one. I didn't move, but I walked. And then it was over.
Ulden awoke to a Zendikar much calmer than he had been expecting. The word for "calm" in Zendikarii had a very different meaning than it did on most planes, but he had grown up knowing a natural world, even if it did tend to get restless. Despite the peace around him, something was bothering him. He felt damp.
He looked at his hand and pulled off the leather glove. His hand was glistening with sweat. Wait a minute, isn't it winter? The sun was shining brightly through the thick leaves of a tree above his head. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and pulled himself up to the trunk of the tree. As he oriented himself he noticed that the copse around him was on something of an incline. A few small cliffs jutted out here and there, but it was mostly a gentle slope that he tracked with his eyes from left to right going up until the treeline closer up obscured his view of the ground. He stood up and pulled off his cloak and more of his winter garb.
He tried to think back to his last memory before waking up, but he found himself unable to organize his thoughts. His memory felt frail and slow, like he was an infant drawing the very first pictures in his mind. His name was Ulden and he was a lullmage. He remembered his mother and father, and he became sad, but he wasn't sure why. Sifting around his mind made him very tired, and he drifted back out of consciousness as the phantoms of his parents floated into the mist.
His eyes were met with darkness when they opened again. He hoped it had only been a few hours and not a few days this time. The sun was peaking out from the mountains ahead. That wasn't a good sign. He spent a few hours stretching out and trying to find some food to eat; he had woken up starving. By dawn he was growing more and more anxious about how confusing his situation was. On Zendikar, unfamiliar territory was not... unfamiliar territory. He was used to being lost. But there were supposed to be people around him, he was sure about that. He had been part of something larger, he was sure of that. A common goal of some sort...
It didn't take long to find a tree that seemed like it would be easy enough to climb to get a little bit more info of his surroundings. He pushed the thin higher branches away and pulled himself above the canopy, shielding his eyes from the morning sun and the unusually strong wind. The forest ended a half-mile away; grasslands and trees stretched down a long slope that curved back up into mountains far in the distance. He looked to his right and saw the same thing. The left was similar. He was in the center of a valley, but it seemed to be roughly circular.
Ulden worked his way back to the ground and mulled over what he had seen as he started to dig through his pack to see what tools he had to work with. He knew the Roil. It worked in three dimensions. If the ground had been pulled up on all sides, it had probably been pulled far above sea level into the sky, which meant he was trapped; possibly alone. That thought faded away and he returned to the Roil. Three dimensions... The thought seemed simplistic. Incomplete.
Reality seemed to flicker. Ulden's mind raced. And then he was standing on a beach. In front of him were countless graves following a hill rising up from the sea. And looming across them was a massive shadow with a form that made him freeze in place. His mind was both blank and full to the brim with thought as he witnessed the shadow shrink back to the sea. The sun came into view over head and he realized he had been standing in place for hours contemplating what was becoming a more and more familiar scene.
He turned around and saw the inconceivably huge figure of Ulamog trapped in stone above him. Reality flickered again.
He was on his knees. He was on the top of a hill in a world he'd never seen before. It was dark and the air was thick with smog. In the distance he could see a large camp. There were humans breaking rocks with large pickaxes in groups around the tents. Towering over the working men and women was an unnatural looking creature with winding skeletal arms each holding long whips. Its hunched back was covered with spikes that looked as sharp as razor blades and its feet were cloven and tipped with cruel talons. It turned its head directly towards Ulden and its red eyes seemed to glow.
The thing knew something Ulden didn't. And it was angry.