Hello everyone, long time no see. Now, for those of you who follow me, you're probably pretty surprised to see an update again after... it's been years, hasn't it? The reason I let my stories die is because, well, I felt that they were uninspired and poorly written. In the meantime, I've been honing my craft over at Spacebattles and testing to see which 'fics people actually liked, and which ones people didn't give two shits about, so that I could bring you the best ones (or at least the most popular ones).
A Planeswalker's Recovery
As I sat behind my shiny wooden desk in the disgustingly saccharine Alfea academy, I reflected on how I'd wound up here. Hah. "Take a break," Jace had said. "You could use a chance to recover" he'd said. Shit, even Arlinn Kord had recommended I take some time to get my head on straight, and she barely deigned to acknowledge my existence most days.
Unbidden, memories rushed to the surface of my mind, and my hands started to shake. For a moment I was back on Zendikar, neophyte walker staring up at the massive bulk of Kozilek as the monstrosity erupted from the dying plane's calcified surface while Ulamog ripped free of the last remnants of our failed hedron trap. Back in the ruins of Sea Gate as reality was rent asunder beneath the weight of the Eldrazi's presence. I'd hit my stride, so to speak, in that infinite moment as spatial distortions wracked our forces and time turned to putty. As Ob Nixilis crushed Jace, Gideon, and Nissa beneath his demonic boot heel. I'd made it through the ordeal with vastly deeper understanding of how truly ephemeral and fragile time and space really were, and I'd only learned more from Kozilek's spawn, turning their own tricks against them. It... hadn't been particularly good for my sanity, but it had certainly helped our forces and had gotten me an invitation to be part of the Gatewatch. My oath had even become my mantra during the events that followed on Innistrad. I blinked my eyes and found myself back on the desolate calcified ground of Zendikar, surrounded by the dust and echoes of the Eldrazi's passing after Chandra Nalaar and Nissa Revane had killed the two eldritch beings.
"For the sake of the future and the hope for a brighter tomorrow, I will keep watch." Those had been my words, my solemn vow. In the wake of Kozilek's resurgence, I'd seen countless potential futures, and so very few of them had been nice ones. I'd gained a faint insight into the myriad calamities that threatened our disturbingly fragile multiverse. Phyrexia, Bolas, Emrakul, and uncountable others, all competing to ruin entire planes.
So, naturally I'd followed Jace to Innistrad. I'd still wanted a bit of a support net to get used to my powers and none of the others had really had the time or alignment to help. I was mostly blue and red aligned, which probably explained why I was so well suited for inherent complexity and chaos involved in mucking about with space and time. So, I'd followed Jace to Innistrad, and that had really done a number on me. On the both of us, to be honest. I was pretty sure the only reason I'd made it through the clusterfuck in anything resembling a functional mental state was because my sanity had already been a little fluid. Hah, and I'd never thought I'd thank Kozilek for anything. I shuddered and clamped my hands on the desk as I unwillingly recalled the cyptoliths' psyche shattering patterns of mana, the eldritch corrupting moon, and the far more mundane horrors so endemic to a plane that redefined gothic horror.
I focused on my breathing, on the pleasant aromas and soothing sounds of Althea Academy, trying to drive away the creeping horrors that rested in my mind. There was power in madness, to be sure, but I couldn't afford to have an episode a mere ten minutes before I was supposed to teach a class on Applied Magic. I'd actually gotten this position purely by accident, having arrived here in the middle of a broom closet and then stumbling into the room where Faragonda was conducting interviews for the position. Apparently there'd been some troubles last semester and the headmistress had wanted to expand the curriculum to include a more practical side. She'd asked me for a practical demonstration of my power, and I'd erased her desk from reality. I chuckled as I remembered the look on her face.
The classroom doors burst open and a veritable horde of gaudily dressed and over glittered teenage girls meandered into the room, all babbling away with out a care in the world. Why was I here again? Right, okay, relax, I could do this. I'd certainly survived far worse.
"Alright, listen up! My name is Ryan, and welcome to Aplied Magical Studies," I belted out, and the excited talking mostly cut off as everyone turned their heads towards me. Well, mostly everyone.
"We'll be getting started right away, so... you, blondie in the back, yes, you! What's your name?" I called out to one girl who was still talking.
"Stella, Professor Ryan," she answered dutifully, looking a bit guilty about having been caught.
"Well, Stella, tell me, did you check your desk for contact poisons before you sat down?" I asked. I'd placed a paralytic on all of the desks in preparation for the first lesson. Innistrad had taught me that paranoia saved lives, and that skaaberen were entirely too clever when it came to slipping all manner of awful elixirs into the most unexpected of places. The bunch of fucking Frankensteins.
"Ummm, no?" the pretty blonde girl replied uncertainly.
"Did any of you?" I asked the class in general, only to receive concerned looks and and various responses to the negative.
"Should we have?" an auburn haired girl sitting next to Stella asked nervously.
"If you have to ask..." I let the sentence trail off as their eyes widened in shock and a few of them started to move. The key word being started, of course, since that was the moment the contact paralytic took effect. It was only a mild one, which would inhibit muscular control and cause an uncomfortable pins and needles sensation, but enough to offer an excellent object lesson.
"Welp, looks like the poison just took effect. Paranoia is your friend girls, and trust me when I tell you that it will save your life. Today's lesson is poisons, obviously. Right now you're experiencing the effects of a contact paralytic. It'll wear off in about half an hour, so don't freak out." There were some muted whimpers and grunts.
"So, I've gone over your coursework from last year, and I know that you all have learned various diagnostic spells to identify stuff in general, so you've got no excuse for using them. Especially when walking into a class named Applied Magic. Now let me make this clear," I paused for a second to emphasize my point, "by the time you walk out that door at the end of this year, you will be capable of managing some minuscule measure of defense against the myriad threats waiting to eat you alive."
As Bloom sat her desk and fought to move her limbs, she felt a cold spike of fear. She hadn't been sure what to expect from the new class when she and her friends had read about it on their schedules, but as the tall, thin, brown haired man in the ragged looking armored leather duster calmly explained what was in store for them, she felt certain she was looking at a villain in disguise. She couldn't help but grunt in discomfort as the awful prickling sensation wracking her body seemed to increase a little bit. Who the hell poisoned a classroom? Seriously? She struggled to concentrate through the pain as Professor Ryan outlined the course objectives. She had the sinking feeling this would be the only form of help or warning they would receive.
"We'll be starting with various forms of detection and preparation before moving on to the more strenuous work involved with defending against physical and mental assaults..." Professor Ryan explained, and Bloom found it odd how pleasant and reassuring his deep voice sounded, in sharp contrast to his haunted and ragged appearance. Wait... mental assault? Mind magic was considered capital E evil! Which... actually made sense to learn to defend against, now that she thought about it, even if the process of doing so was a bit of a gray area. Better in a classroom than against an actual villain, right? Even if she was positive that she was staring at one right now.
The contact poison wore off soon enough, and all the students started to shout at me as soon as it did.
"Everyone shut up!" I bellowed, and a small surge of my power caused the room to ripple and distort as space-time shuddered. That quieted them down right quick.
"Thank you. Now... you don't like it? Too bad. I've seen too many people die because they weren't prepared, and my job is to make sure that doesn't happen to you," I growled as I sat down behind my desk, gripping the arms of my chair to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. That had been a bit too much like the shrill screams of the villagers as Avacyn's angels butchered them. Shit. I wasn't ready for this. I should just tell Faragonda I was a shitty teacher and try to find a resort plane or something. I realized the room was filled with a terrible silence as the class waited on a knife's edge for my next words. The students had subconsciously started to huddle together, as if numbers would save them from what I could do when I really got going.
"Sorry. Now," I reached into the satchel under my desk and pulled out three vials of liquid, "two of these vials are potent healing elixirs, and one is an extremely virulent poison." I poured some liquid from each vial into three separate identical cups. "I want one of you to come up here and use your magic to identify the poison. Any volunteers?" There was a long and uncertain pause.
"No?" I sighed, "well okay then. You," I pointed to a tall girl with exceptionally long sandy brown hair.
"M-m-me?" she stammered as her eyes widened in panic.
"Yes, you. What's your name?"
"F-flora," the girl practically whispered.
"Right, Flora, you just got volunteered. Come on up here, and don't worry. It's not like I'm going to make you drink it if you fuck up," I tried to reassure the girl. Oddly enough, that didn't seem to make her more comfortable. The girl, Flora, reluctantly walked up to my desk and stuck her trembling hand out over the cups and stammered her way through an incantation.
"Umm... that one?" she tentatively declared, pointing to the cup that was covered in red sparkles.
"Yep. Congratulations Miss Flora, but you need to work on your incantation. You were far to reticent to commit," I instructed her before waving her back to her desk. As she turned around, I fired off a quick counterspell to nullify the tell tale glow and then used my powers to shuffle the cups. "Next volunteer please."
By the time class ended, most of the girls had correctly identified the poison, and I'd given them a few pointers on how to improve their spell casting. They were far too... slow. And that was the sad truth of it. I'd learned my craft the hard way, with hordes of eldrazi spawn at my throat and the fresh corpses of Humans, Elves, Kor, Goblins, Mer and even Vampires leaking their vital fluids into the dry bone white dust around my knees as we desperately strove to keep what little ground we had. I'd refined further amidst the unholy terrors and fallow, rotting fields of Innistrad while a crazed goddess butchered her worshipers and the myriad monsters devoured those that survived. They had neither a Planeswalker's raw instinctive talent for magic, nor the constant threat of a horrible death to push them to develop their skills at the breakneck pace I had. I groaned and took a long pull from a hip flask full of an extremely expensive Ravnican whiskey that Jace had given me as a "get well" gift. Honestly, it had seemed extremely out of character for the man to act with such sentiment. Hell, he'd probably done so as a psychological ploy to make me feel slightly indebted to him, but I appreciated it nevertheless. I loved a good whiskey.
"Professor Ryan?" There was a lightning ax in my hand and a counterspell on my lips almost before I'd registered the unexpected voice, and I could feel my sanity beginning to fray as I reflexively started to sacrifice my mind and memory for power. But then I saw the scared pale face of the auburn haired girl from earlier and dismissed the my reflexive attack.
"Next time, fucking knock. I damn near killed you, girl," I breathed. Great, here I was, a violent unstable wreck of a Planeswalker, unexpectedly entrusted with educating a bunch of vapid and unsuspecting teenage girls. Ohhhhh, yeah. This was gonna go great.