Shadow's Seneschal
An MTG Fan-fiction
All was not quiet in the Tenth District of Ravnica. Then again, it never was quiet; any city that big never is. The Selesnya Conclave's dryads were out preaching to all who could listen, the Azorius hussars were out enforcing their meaningless laws, and Izzet mages were creating explosions.
In other words, a normal day.
Or so it seemed, but something was coming. Something was coming that would change the face of the plane.
In one of many deserted alleyways, the air began to shimmer; not like a heat haze, but more like a haze of mana. The haze began to converge on a spot precisely two inches above the ground. It began to take on a shape, the shape of a man. The shape solidified, and the man slumped to the ground. Glowing steam rolled off his body, and his eyes were rolled back in their sockets. Pulsing runes shifted across his midnight-blue cloak, then faded. His breathing was fast and ragged, as if he were an inch away from death.
A tentacle snaked out of the air and lightly brushed his temple. With a gasp, his eyes rolled back into their spots and his breathing became regular. He sat up and looked around. "Ah," he said curiously, "Ravnica. Not my first choice, but it will do." He held up a hand and inspected the small flask he held in it. "Even more perfect," he whispered, "Sorin's blood is undisturbed." He stood up and walked out to the main street. He stared in awe at the bustling metropolis before him.
"It's changed," he said, "Prahv was over there; Vizkopa wasn't nearly as large, and Nivix didn't glow."
"Ah, victim of the Dimir, are you?" a voice said from behind him. He spun around and looked into the eyes of a vampire. For a minute, he looked like Sorin, but then the hallucination ended. "Doesn't matter, we get them all the time. They wiped your memory, right? Made you think you were around during the Guildpact?"
"Um, yes, I suppose," the man replied evasively. The truth wouldn't make sense to this vampire, "But who are you? I didn't think vampires came out during the day."
"What are you talking about? I don't know where you come from, but on Ravnica, vampires can be in the sunlight." He stuck out his hand. "Mirko Vosk."
The man shook it. "Julna Buras," he replied.
Three weeks later, Julna was living comfortably in one of the higher buildings of the Tenth. Mirko was telepathic, and he had been able to plant fake memories in key people who owned the building. Julna suspected that Mirko was Dimir; not many people outside the House knew how to plant memories, but Julna needed the privacy for this experiment. He had been sneaking to Esper for several days now to collect the necessary etherium, but now he could start. Using his lithomancy, he fashioned an etherium body out of the metal. It looked crude and like something discarded by the Izzet, but he wasn't finished yet. Pouring mana into the simulacra, he opened the flask he had brought with him from Zendikar. Even as he was about to pour it on the body, and a small shard was ejected from the heart of the figure. It fell to the ground and began to twitch violently. Julna picked it up, only to be thrown violently to the side as the shard of etherium pulled him out of his home and all the way down to the ground level of the district. It pulled him to the very center of the district, and then pulled him downward as it drove itself into the ground. Pulsating blue lines rippled outward from the shard, and they seemed to become shimmering serpents as they traveled in ten different directions.
Julna felt that that would make like an Orzhov contract and come back to haunt him.
The shard seemed to be inert once again as Julna reached down to touch it. Hurrying back to his home, he inserted the shard back into the simulacra. He once again opened the flask while pouring mana into the body. He took a dagger and pricked his thumb, dropping two drops of blook into the flask. Saying unintelligible words, he infused the contents of the flask with mana.
Taking the flask, he approached the simulacra. Still chanting, he poured dark red blood over the body of etherium.
Rather than just flowing off the smooth metal, the blood moved seemingly of its own accord until it covered the entire structure. Etherium melted around the blood, turning into flesh, until only an etherium skeleton remained. The flesh became more and more opaque, even as veins and arteries formed, until a living, breathing human body stood before him. It didn't have a mind in it. Not yet anyway.
Julna was getting weaker. He needed to get out of this body before Sorin's final curse got rid of him for good. Placing his hands on the body's temples, he began chanting in the divine language of Theros, calling on his own consciousness. He directed it into the body he had created, and he felt a peculiar feeling as his mind was transferred from body to the other. As there was no more consciousness to stop it, Sorin's curse made short work of the old body, turning the flesh to dust. As the new Julna opened his eyes, the same tentacle that had revived him in the alleyway shot out of nowhere and wrapped itself around Julna's head, pulsing rapidly with black mana. Every cell in Julna's new body erupted in unspeakable agony as black magic was woven into his being.
The last thing he remembered was falling to the ground as the tentacle snaked back into nothingness.
He awoke when he heard the maid coming up the stairs. Realizing that he had never actually put clothes on this new body, he said a quick word to keep the stone door from opening.
For reasons he did not yet understand, it did not work, and the maid came in to see whom to her eyes was a naked stranger in her employer's house, standing next to a pile of dust covered in her employer's clothes. She shrieked and tried to run to the door. Julna attempted to follow her, raising his hand to try and stop her, when the most peculiar thing happened. His shadow detached itself from his feet and reached out to the maid's shadow. When it came into contact with the shadow of the maid's arm, it closed its hand around the arm and yanked it backwards, somehow pulling the maid with it. "Melena! It's me!" he said desperately as she tried to scream, only to be muffled somehow by Julna's shadow. He leaned down next to her ear and whispered a word only he and she would know, as she was not from Innistrad: "Stromkirk". He had told her this in the unlikely event that a Dimir agent ever hijacked his body. It still worked now; she seemed to calm down and turned around to allow him to pull on his clothes. He explained somewhat why he looked entirely different from his former self, telling her how he used lithomancy and a sangromancer's blood in order to fashion himself a new body. She nodded, though he couldn't tell if she understood exactly what he was saying. She said, "I'll go get you a mirror. You should see what you look like now." She ran out and returned with a small hand mirror. Julna marveled at his reflection; when he had come to Ravnica he had been around 50 years old. Now, he was a little older than twenty, and he knew that he was going to look like that for a VERY long time. His body was immortal, thanks to the etherium.
But why had his lithomancy failed to work?
Mirko was more than a little shocked when he found Julna looking much different than he used to be.
"Julna!" he exclaimed in shock, "What happened to you?"
Julna explained an abridged version of the process of creating his new body, excluding the fact that the material used happened to come from a different universe.
"When I woke up, I tried to use my lithomancy again, but it didn't work," Julna explained, "Instead, my shadow seemed to take on a life of its own and was able to control my maid."
"Interestingā¦" Mirko said, "Julna, would you like to meet with the people I work for?"
Julna knew that Mirko worked for the Dimir; a week back, he was repulsed when Mirko had asked this the first time, but for some reason, now it excited him. He wanted to meet this guild of spies.
"Certainly," Julna said, "I would love to work for the Dimir."
Mirko's eyes flashed, and he said, "I didn't say work for them; I only said you could meet them. We will determine if you are worthy to join the House."
They moved swiftly through the Ravnican undercity, being careful to avoid patches of fungus that could hold Golgari monsters. Strangely, the more they walked, the more Julna felt that he had pressing business elsewhere. He eventually had to bring this up to Mirko, who just laughed and said, "Oh, those are just the memory wards. Whenever you get close to them, they rearrange your memory so that you leave. Ignore it."
They eventually reached a glowing blue arch that led into a dark corridor. Two vampire sentinels dropped down from nowhere and crossed their swords in front of the pair. Without stopping, Mirko placed a hand on each vampire's hand and concentrated. The vampires slumped to the ground, and the blue glow shut itself off.
"Why did you do that?" Julna asked incredulously.
"They expect it of me. If I didn't do that, they'd think I was an impostor." He advanced through the corridor, with Julna following behind.
The corridor opened up into an immense, circular canal, like a moat. Sitting in the middle of the dank water was a tall, dark tower. Julna breathed in, absorbing the black and blue mana inherent in this dark, damp place. This was a powerful place for a planeswalker of blue or black magic.
Mirko seemed to step straight onto the water, but Julna guessed that there was an invisible bridge that led straight to the tower, which Julna suspected was Duskmantle. They reached the large door emblazoned with the Dimir insignia, and Mirko knocked once. The door swung open of its own accord, and they walked in.
The inside of Duskmantle was surprisingly innocuous. A circular room ringed with torches was the entry hall, with a single staircase leading upward off to one side. Mirko and Julna began ascending the staircase, and Julna marveled at how uniform Duskmantle looked. At every floor, there was a door leading into a section of the tower. Mirko and Julna stopped at the very top floor, where the door was open. They entered, and Julna saw someone he never wanted to see again.
"SORIN!?" He screamed, running into the room. He was about to open up the floor beneath his feet when he remembered that his lithomancy wasn't working.
Sorin only laughed. "I am not your enemy, Julna Buras," he said. His flesh melted and reformed into that of a cloaked figure, his face invisible. "I am Lazav, leader of the House. Mirko has told me that he has found an excellent umbreomancer in you."
"Umbreomancy?" Julna asked, "What's that?"
"Shadow magic, Buras. Shadow magic."
Mirko led Julna back down the staircase, Julna fuming all the while. Lazav had explained how most new Dimir initiates were not even told of the existence of Duskmantle; Julna was admitted only because of his potential. Julna knew this potential was obvious; planeswalkers are among the most powerful of mages. What made Julna mad was that Lazav knew everything about him, save Julna's planeswalker status. Mirko had dredged up everything he could in the split second before Julna saw him for who he was; that was why Julna momentarily saw Mirko as Sorin. Mirko had invaded his mind before they had even met!
Mirko was reading his emotions even now. "Come now, Julna", he chided as they stopped outside a door leading to one of the levels of Duskmantle, "Did you really expect otherwise? Master Lazav never lets anyone see him without finding out everything about that person." He opened the door and beckoned Julna to come inside.
Inside the door was a spacious main room with many corridors leading to other sections. A large Dimir insignia was tiled on the floor, and Mirko was very careful to walk around it. Julna followed suit. They proceeded down one of the corridors until they reached another door. Mirko knocked three times and said, "Grade-A initiate to enter the Umbreomancer's Sanctum."
The door opened to reveal another vampire, this one much smaller than Mirko. He took Julna by the arm and pulled him into the room.
Inside was a ring of vampires seated on the ground. They all stared at Julna as he walked in. The vampire directed Julna to stand in the center of the circular room. He then spoke, "Now then, Lord Vosk told us that you were a Grade-A initiate. That means that you must have beguiling potential if you have been admitted to Duskmantle already. What can you do?"
"I don't know," Julna replied, "I haven't really tried. All I know is that I somehow made my shadow detach from my feet and manipulate a flesh-and-blood person."
The vampires hissed. "Impossible," one said. "He can't have progressed that far," another proclaimed.
The lead vampire raised his hands to silence him. "Can you show us?" he asked.
Julna shifted on his feet. "Maybe. Like I said, I don't know how I did it." He raised his hand began to concentrate. He could feel the mana coming into him from the canal around him.
One of the vampires snickered and said, "He is nothing but a charlatan." He laughed out loud, then gasped as Julna's shadow detached and grabbed the vampire's shadow's throat. Julna quickly brought the shadow back to him, leaving the offender retching and breathing raggedly.
"Amazing," the leader said, "You are beyond anything we have seen."
Julna looked at the awed faces of the vampires around him, then crumpled to the ground as an onslaught of voices suddenly assaulted his mind. He tried to make out what they were saying, but could only hear a few snippets, such as "He is the one" and "Our Seneschal appears".
"It's the shades!" one of the vampires cried. He ran over to an iron door set into the wall and banged on it violently. The voices ceased. "Our apologies," he said kindly, "The shades can be⦠unruly. Let us show you around the Sanctum."
Julna walked swiftly, moving as quietly as he could. He needed to see what those voices were.
He had been training with the Dimir for two weeks now, and he felt that no one was able to teach him more than a few basic tricks. They taught him how to better manipulate shadows; they had taught him how to light a room by moving the shadows to one side. But no matter how much they tried to explain, Julna refused to accept that this was all that umbreomancers could do. Shadow was more than just the absence of light; it had substance to it, of that Julna was sure. Why else were powerful umbreomancers able to sink themselves into shadow to travel, then rematerialize somewhere else?
He approached the iron door and fought to walk through the tumult of voices that came on his mind.
"SILENCE," he whispered as forcefully as he could.
The voices ceased. "That's better," Julna said, "Now, I need to know what you are."
"WE ARE SHADES."
"Yes, I gathered that. But what ARE you? What are you made of?"
"WE ARE SHADES. THE SHADOWS ARE OUR SUBSTANCE"
Julna smiled in triumph. That alone told him what he needed to know. "Who is your leader? How are you governed?"
"WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THESE WORDS MEAN."
Julna smiled again. He could make them serve him, given the proper training. "How did you come to exist?"
"WE WERE BORN FROM SHADOW AND LIGHT. THE SHADOW WAS OUR SUBSTANCE, BUT OUR SUBSTANCE WAS PULLED BY AN ARTIFACT OF LIGHT. THE LIGHT WAS BLACK, AND THE ARTIFACT HAD STRANGE WORDS WRITTEN WITHIN IT. THE CREATOR HAD A SPARK OF LIGHT WITHIN HER AS WELL."
Julna was taken aback at this. A planeswalker made them? Probably Liliana and her accursed chain veil. The light they spoke of was mana, and the shadows were pulled in and mixed with mana. Julna wanted to try this for himself.
At midnight, Julna was one of the few left in Duskmantle. He stood in the center of the canal, letting the black and blue mana flow throughout him. Earlier, he had succeeded in detaching a shadow from a piece of furniture and letting it float freely in the air in the form of smoke. He pulled several shadows this way until it was almost impossible to see. He lifted his cloak and began chanting, the magical runes flaring to life. He began to spin, letting the cloak flow through the shadow until it was absorbed. He suddenly jerked the cloak forward and pulled it back like a whip. The shadow absorbed in the cloak, now infused with mana, shot out and formed into a shade. It opened a pair of glowing white eyes and said, "I thank you for creating me. Now I will leave." It tried to glide away, but Julna's shadow held it back.
"Oh no," Julna said, "You are my servant. I created you, and soon, your brethren will join me." He flicked his wrist, propelling the shade into Duskmantle and locking it safely with the other shades.
He then proceeded to his REAL task. Detaching his shadow from his feet, Julna let it float. A planeswalker or even just a human's shadow is much more potent and powerful than the shadow of ordinary things; and an umbreomancing planeswalker's shadow was a powerful thing, indeed. So powerful, that Julna planned to make a shade king out of it.
Spinning again, he chanted and pulled in more mana than ever before. When the shadow settled, a shade much more solid and pristine formed. It opened eyes that were bright blue, and it said, "I thank you for creating me. Unlike my brethren whom you have told me of as you formed me, I shall be loyal to you always and forever. I ask only for a name in return."
"That's not an unreasonable request," Julna remarked, "I will call you Falderin, and I will set spells and hexes that will allow you to always be at my beck and call, but will always be near me and share in my power."
"I thank you for this name. What are we to do after that?"
Julna looked at all the shadows around him, just waiting to be formed. "Then, Falderin, we shall build an army."
Creating shades became more and more easy. The shadows he took replenished themselves every day when the light came in, so he had an infinite supply. He was very careful to not take a person's shadow, as the shade spawned from it would be as powerful as Falderin and much more unruly.
Falderin right now as hiding, as Julna did not want to reveal his power just yet. He was impersonating Julna's shadow, as the shadow of a living thing does not grow back. He was able to communicate with Julna this way, and Julna could make sure that Falderin wasn't committing any acts of treason.
Lazav, of course, knew about Julna's abilities and what he could do; he knew everything about Julna. He had sent Julna out to investigate suspicious markings appearing throughout the Tenth District rather than send Julna on the normal umbreomancer's errand of catching renegade shades and locking them in that cell.
Julna approached the point where Lazav told him that these lines were appearing. When they came in view, he cursed and stumbled back.
It was the blue lines, the ones that Julna's etherium had somehow caused to become active. They were pulsing, leading back in the direction of Duskmantle, as well as to Vizkopa and Nivix. What were these? He sensed law magic in them, but he could not imagine how the Azorius could place something so subtle and that encompassed an entire district, possibly the whole city!
Falderin called to Julna to detach him in the form of an intense stomach pain; grimacing, Julna spoke the command words that would free Falderin. He solidified and inspected the lines. "Pah! Leylines," he said, "Created by the blue and white manas. We must inform this to the shape-changing one." He returned to his shadowy state at Julna's feet.
"Leylines?" Lazav asked incredulously, "Lines of pure mana? Impossible. My spies would have discovered this a long time ago."
"Actually, Lord Lazav," Julna said tentatively, "You wouldn't have. These lines have been dormant for a very long time."
"Then why have they suddenly activated?"
"Because of me, Lord Lazav. While I was shaping myself a new body, due to the curse that you learned had been set upon me, a shard of the metal I used detached itself and drove itself into the ground, nearly pulling me along with it. It began to glow, and the lines pulsed outward and fled in ten directions. I feel strongly that they went to the ten guildhalls, if you can call Skarrg a guildhall."
"You did this, Buras?"
"I did, Lord Lazav, and now, if I may be so bold as to ask, could I inspect them? I wish to be a spy in this guild, and I have many talents that could be unique to you."
Lazav thought for a moment. "All right, Julna, you will be my personal and chief spy. You will send your shades throughout Ravnica, gathering information on these leylines. I have received reports that the Izzet are unusually interested in these lines. The shades will gather all intelligence on the leylines and the Izzet's endeavors, then will report back to you and that king of shades you have so cleverly concealed." He tossed Julna a small blue stone. "This is a guidestone," he said, "It unlocks a much more reliable way back to Duskmantle. It will activate the leylines that lead to this guildhall, but, if you come here without following them, the immense memory wards I have now placed will plague you until you leave. Work well, Julna Buras, and soon the mysteries of these lines will be yours to behold."
