1: The Start of it All

Nik Stoll I

Nik's blue robes billowed behind him as he rushed down the long corridors of his private research tower, making his way to the nearest door to the outside world. Seemingly hours ago he was in the middle of an experiment that he'd been tinkering with for weeks; temporal mastery. His memory flashed to the incident where something had gone wrong...or worse, had gone right.

His hands held steady as he channeled the blue tendrils of mana, carefully sculpting them to his will and putting them to purpose. Tonight he would succeed, and he'd go backwards in time a few moments just to prove that he could. That was his way. He'd study a new form of magic just to try it once and then he would rarely revisit the same spell twice.

He felt a sort of "twitch", as though the mana had fluctuated somehow. He brushed it off initially, thinking it to be his imagination, when it happened again. Curious, he began to focus his mind on the mana to understand what it was doing. Suddenly, the blue mana in his palms erupted into a blinding light, and the resulting shockwave knocked him prone. His energy faded, and he fell unconscious for a time.

When he came to, everything seemed to be exactly as he'd left it. This was worrisome. He had no way to tell for sure what the rebounded spell had done, if it had done anything. He held no religious belief, but for the first time he prayed that no effect had taken hold due to the misfired spell. Time alteration, admittedly, was a dangerous undertaking; one he planned to meddle very little with.

Before him and closing in fast was a door to a balcony. Without pausing, he shoved the doors open and stepped into the fresh Dominarian air. There was a nearby village that he could see, and off in the distance he could make out the edges of Llanowar. He breathed a sigh of relief; the terrain was exactly the same as he was accustomed to. "Nothing's wrong," he whispered to himself. The rebounded spell had done nothing.

The sound of slow, cautious footsteps from behind caught his attention. Must be Nara, he thought, his mind going to his young apprentice who, like himself, was a planeswalker. She must be worried. I made quite the ruckus. He turned to face her. "I'm sorry about the noise. I...I..." he hesitated; Nara wasn't standing before him.

Instead of the short blonde hair and green eyes of his dutiful assistant, he instead saw the shaggy brown hair and grey eyes of a complete stranger. The boy before him wore similar robes, implying that he was his apprentice, but Nik knew not who he was. The boy gave Nik a look of concern. "Everything okay, sir?"

"How did you get in here?" Nik shot without hesitation.

"Sir?"

"Who are you?" Nik asked.

"Sir, don't you recognize me? It's me, Cenna. Your assistant."

"Nara is my assistant."

"Who?"

"Young planeswalker," he explained before he realized what he'd said. The common person doesn't know about the planeswalkers. He shook his head, mentally chastising himself.

Cenna gave Nik a sad smile. "Well, I'd bet that'd be better for you than me. I'm no planeswalker. I'm stuck on Dominaria for all my life. You took me in because you thought I had a latent spark, remember?"

Nik shook his head. That can't be right. No, no, that can't be right at all. Nara. Nara has always been my assistant. I don't know you, boy. I never have."

Cenna looked concerned as Nik spoke, but a sudden excited spark lit up his eyes. "I know! I know! Oh, I get it!"

"Get what, boy?" Nik asked, but he had his own suspicions. Please, don't be what I think this is.

"You succeeded! You used temporal magic!"

Nik sighed as he stared at the floor. "That's what I was afraid of."

"But sir, you've been trying to use temporal magic for years! You've finally done it."

"I only ever wanted to observe. Never alter. If this much is different, what else have I changed." He turned to Cenna. "So, you know about planeswalkers?" Cenna nodded. "Have I ever had guests? Other planeswalkers?"

"Yes, sir. Most of them you deal with on the rarest of occasions, but there are a couple that you treat as colleagues."

"Is Jace Beleren one such colleague?"

Cenna shook his head. "No. I've never met a Jace Beleren. I know of only three planeswalkers you've ever had regula dealings with."

"What are their names?"

"Karra Ran. She's a blue mage who, like you, has been seeking a potential spark to be her apprentice. Her apprentice, Teri Kol, was in fact an unsparked planeswalker. She ignited and fled not too long ago. Varen Fade is a planeswalker associated with the Izzet League on Ravnica. You deal with him when you need new equipment. And Tebin Agpan. I know the least about him. All I know is that you despise working with him, but will if and when you have to."

"I don't know any of them," Nik stated. Jace, Sorin, Ugin...they don't exist here do they? "I must go. I need to see what the damage is."

Cenna nodded. "Where will you go?" he asked, a scroll and quill in hand ready to write. "You usually have me keep a record of your comings and goings."

Nik chuckled. "I had Nara do much the same. I suppose I'll start with Innistrad. Surely Sorin was still made into a vampire in this timeline. Sparked or not, he should still be alive. I'll seek him out first."

"Will you be needing anything while you are gone?" Cenna asked.

Nik stared at him for a moment before a gentle smile crossed his lips. "You're a good lad, you know that? Yes. Study everything I have on temporal magic. Study and catalogue your findings, but do not attempt to use the magic."

Cenna nodded. "Yes, sir."

"I'll be back as quick as I can. If memory serves correctly, trouble tends to fall into the laps of planeswalkers who journey away from home. Let's pray that it is not true." He turned and began to walk away. The air around Nik rippled and burned, and Nik's body blurred out of reality as though he wasn't there to begin with.

Author's Note

Ah, to be writing again. Its quite nice. Hello, friends! Long time no see. Unless I'm completely new to you because you've come looking for Magic: the Gathering fics, in which case its a pleasure to meet you! I hope you enjoy! For all of my RWBY readers, allow me to explain (and apologize). My writing tends to force me to take breaks from projects that I've worked on for too long. My Shifting Remnant AU, as well as Witch Hunter Ruby have taken way too long for me to write, and as such my brain simply can't fathom them for now. Tis a temporary ailment, I assure you, but an ailment it is. I do not know when I will return to my RWBY roots, but in the meantime, let me show you what I've done to pass the time in the past several months.

While I may not have been doing RWBY stories, I have been working on this Magic project for quite some time. You see, I would use Magic Set Editor to mock up my own card designs for fun. I'd never invest in it for too long, as it was just a hobby to pass the time every so often. A couple of months ago, however, I began to piece together my broken sets into a cohesive story. What if there was an alternate timeline in Magic: the Gathering, and someone needed to fix this breach in the timelines? I have just the cast of characters to do that! Wait! What if I took my fanfic of an Innistrad story, and put it into this alternate timeline? A timeline where Avacyn doesn't go crazy and die for example? I like it~!

And, to show just how long I've been doing this (though only in segments for the first year), I'm breaking this story into "sets" and "blocks", starting with this first part. Part 1: The Becoming is like a CoreSet. Not a traditional one, as I won't go through all of my mono colored Planeswalkers. In fact, I'm telling these stories as a sort of "as they happen" sort of way. I expect The Becoming to be about 5-8 chapters long. Originally I was just going to release them all in the same story, but seeing as how I have the whole story planned out start to finish, I feel as though the length will be too ridiculous. And you've read The Longest Night or Eternity Rising, then you know how long my stories can get. This will be longer, I promise.

Side note: my updated Profile Picture is the set symbol I designed for all of Ignite! The cover art for The Becoming is the set symbol for this story specifically. :D

So, I hope you all like this story, and I am sorry for further postponing my RWBY work.

Till Next Time! :D

Fun Fact: Show of hands, how many of you read my Shifting Remnant AU? If you read either The Longest Night or Eternity Rising then you might recognize our Planeswalker here. Nik Stoll is back! He's kind of my go to magic user. He's in a lot of my stories, be they original or fanfiction.