Chapter 1: Forgotten Grave
If there was anything that irritated Johnson Viandas, it was a graveyard, especially a very full one. It reminded him that not everyone was blessed with eternal life as he was. Everyone the supreme entity knew would grow, become middle aged, then senile, and die a terrible death. A death of paralysis on a death bed when the body ate itself. At times, Johnson wished that they had won that war so long ago. It would be so much better than living like this, cursed with the memories.
Others, like the dragon Szat, liked their eternal power, they used it to inflict pain on to others, and quite often, they got away with it. That, his old mentor said, was the purpose of Johnson's long, tumultuous existence. He was a living counterbalance to the monsters that ravaged the multiverse. His spark, Walker Karn said, had power unseen since the dragon gods. The memories came fresh in that graveyard, the memories of the insane little misadventures of a man driven for revenge so much he endangered a whole school of students. Not like Johnson considered himself much better, he was doing mostly the same thing. Three problems existed for Johnson in becoming the Walker policeman. One, he enjoyed fighting wars, they gave him a semblance of his old life. Two, he could never work up enough nerve to fight another like him.
Three, Johnson had no clue how to use his own massive power, it was more of a curse than a blessing. The last time, when the Drsians invaded Gaea, his home planet, he had accidentally unleashed it the instant he became a Walker. The ensuing blast took care of the Drsian race, but it also sunk two continents. One was Taeges, which now housed the flying academy Johnson "Keres" Viandas used to promote magical knowledge. The students were promising, one day, they might prove useful in repelling Johnson's age old enemies past down on him from his predecessor. However, the Enemy had possibly infiltrated in the same way they had the last couple times. With use of secret spies(secret even to the spies themselves), dark spells, and the ever infamous ambulator.
Johnson watched people walking through the graveyard and managed to hold back his tears, those were a unique part of him. Despite becoming a man of near infinite power, he could still cry, he still needed to eat to maintain his power, and he breathed. The freshest grave had no body, it was for one of the student's cousin. She "died" in the last academy, or at least that was what she wanted everyone to believe as she journeyed the multiverse. One could say she opened the ambulator to a world of trouble, but that would be overly cruel. She was deceived by the cruelest betrayer of all, she was betrayed by love. It twisted around her, let her rest easy while her lover took the academy deeper and deeper into darkness. His grave was next to hers. It was due to the request of Johnson, as the two could never truly love. She was a student committed to fighting them, and he was one of them, an oil-blooded Phyrexian.
The only pity Johnson afforded Kerrick was the fact he had been Johnson's benefactor when the young ruler was in danger due to his brothers. The sleeper helped Johnson sneak away and prepare his defenses against his fratricidal brothers. He owed it to the man, not the monster, to make a grave for him. After all, blowing people in all ways from Sunday usually doesn't leave much room for a body. The only remaining thing was a lock of golden hair. If Johnson could remove the Phyrexian evil from a man, he would, but he couldn't.
The deception was due to the death god Yawgmoth, who himself laid dead himself in the most massive grave in the world, Urborg. He laid in the grave of Dralnu, and Urza, and Mishra, and Gerard, and Crovax(who held more secrets than Johnson dared to think of). Perhaps these silent souls cursed him, because here Johnson Viandas was, making the same mistakes. As he watched the students, they bowed silently to their Vice Chancellor, and shuffled out, some in fear. Johnson looked out into the distance as young Mylene looked back at him. She was crying, he realized, and he ran over and took her tears on a single hand. Her cousin died brutally to a monster, not her lover, who was one himself.
As they watched the students shuffle out, she asked of him quietly, with much sorrow, "Walker, when will this stupid fighting end? It is costing you, isn't it? You cannot just throw away our lives like this..." he replied, "I cannot deny that I am throwing lives down the drain, but I can only hope the world we create with no Phyrexians is better than the one we live in..."He felt like breaking down when he noticed she was looking off into the distance. The shadows seemed to obtain a life of their own tonight. Then, the vague life was gone. Johnson inquired, "What was that?"
She answered, "I pray it is nothing I can feel guilty about, I cannot bear to take a life today, not when I see my beloved cousin and her once lover laying in the ground." The Walker simply frowned, "The bodies are gone, we merely see the evidence of their deaths. I wish we could let every charming sleeper with blond hair survive, but we can't. One of them will doom our world to the hordes of evil, and you saw what happened after a century, he had neither reservations, nor love for Jhoira. Only the hate Phyrexians are born with." Mylene exploded, "And why can't you just walk everything alive away from this plane and leave this place to them? You racist pig..." She ceased her speech when she saw something of such great strangeness it left the both of them shocked. A young man wearing a black cape and cowl had left a large flower on the grave of Jhoira, and whispered a few words in a language neither Johnson nor Mylene understood.
Maybe it was another relative, but then he did something unforeseen by the Walker, he took another flower and walked to the heavily graffiti-marked tomb of the Sleeper. The Sleeper who now slept forever. He dropped the flower and murmured some words in another language that sounded like a series of grunts and growls. It was Phyxic, the language of man's enemies. Approximately, the "words" meant "sleep well and forever, father." The smell of evil hanged in the air like the stench of a body. Mylene watched, thunderstruck as he bent down and wiped off the vilest insult with a rag. Johnson knew his duty well, if Karn returned and saw he let a Sleeper get away, well, all parts of his soul would be angry.
Before Johnson could move, Mylene did. She threw a flaming blast at the Sleeper, who turned and ran like the wind as if he had seen death. When he ran, Johnson saw dark blond hair tumble from the dark cowl. The boy was shaken as he leaped deftly over some of the graves to escape blasts of furious fire. Mylene was blindingly angry at that one, more than usual, "Get back here, you oil-blooded beast! I'll fry your iron until its black!!" The man was certainly an athlete, for the way he dodged the fire. Johnson sent half hearted aid to Mylene as he contemplated what this was. The burst of water caught the Sleeper off guard and made his little outfit wet. Mylene cursed and changed her type of magic to blasts of lightning. The bolts were harder to avoid, but were every bit as lethal to something with oil for blood.
Johnson knew if he died, then all links to the Phyrexians would be lost here, he had to live. That was a little harder to do than to say, though, as he had a maddened Mylene at the sleeper's throat. She dove for the watery mess of cape and man, and she tore the large garb from his face in her madness. Johnson did not know what made her so angry about him, but whatever it was intensified when she saw the near-golden hair of the sleeper. He was a picture of the Phyrexian overlord, except less "perfect" from a girl's perspective. He wasn't as muscular as his predecessor's human form, nor did he have a beard. His eyes weren't blue, but a deep green. He was clothed in a black shirt with no sleeves, and khaki(if that was still what they called the clothes on Earth) jeans. There was a strange feeling from him, one that infuriated Mylene. She was intent on revenge.