Season of the Lich
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.
Summary:
Ashiok approaches Varina, Lich Queen for information on the Phyrexians.
Time was at her fingertips. Hard light Varina read and operated on successive diagrams.
Planeswalkers lamented losing unparalleled power and knowledge in the Mending, but they weren't the only mages who suffered an inconvenient obstacle to their games.
At the peak of the planar chaos connected to the rifts, Varina's future sight was unbound. Hued blue by the rifts, people, animals, objects, and landscapes from worlds and periods beyond hers entered her vision with the greatest clarity, and she pulled the dead from these worlds across temporal portals into her present.
Since then, her optimum vantage had withered considerably. Plucking extraplanar matter returned to being impossible, and baseline resurrection spells did not come as fluidly as they did when time was spiralling out of control. For the self-seated Lich Queen, that may have been weeks or hundreds of years ago, if she cared to analyze time's effects.
Alack, Varina bore zero personal fascination with the past. She focalized all her attention and magic on the future, or most accurately, futures. Those she could see ahead of her on her throne of bone. By peering into this range of unfulfilled realities, Varina was perpetually at work scanning for zombies to raise among discarded futures' discarded. The shadows yet to achieve substance or death, originating from eventualities which would never pass.
The ravages of time impressed no meaning; her biological processes, including age and sleep, were methodically frozen. Her body of ossified striations preserved a shrivelled grey that she covered in a simple red robe. While a more narcissistic woman might be driven to demonic contracts to reclaim her apex beauty, Varina selected the opposite semblance, sitting like mummified remains on display.
She did not invert necromantic energies upon herself, placing her soul inside the designated phylactery of her mask, to seek something as irrational as an attachment to one's youth.
She sacrificed life, embracing dark wizardry, specifically to tap a more abstract notion of perfection.
"Necrosis in 44 out of 307 potential reanimation targets is at an adequate stage. Widening field. 48 out of 307."
Fact: The Mending was bad for Varina. Her current gravepool did not broaden beyond the castaways of the plane she occupied.
"48 out of 307? Not a very monumental theft," an unctuous voice mocked.
Ashiok.
Nightmare Weaver. Dream Render. Nightmare Muse. Sculptor of Fears. The planeswalker travelled with an abundance of frightening titles.
Varina looked at the black smoke between two rocky horns where a face should have been. Ashiok had taken an interest in her activities before, and though few escaped the telepathic duress of Ashiok's form – the long fingernails, the unsettling lips, the unknowability or absence of gender – Varina wasn't so fresh she'd disregard defence measures to insulate her mind from outside attack.
"My dear Varina…"
"Your dreams of tormenting cities waste my valuable time."
"Ah, but you have so much time to spare," Ashiok ingratiated.
"Say what you've come to say. I haven't lived countless centuries to endure your efforts at suspense."
"If you call this living, I'll humour you. There's a variety of nightmare out there I must savour further. I desire your wisdom encompassing the futures you've seen to narrow my search for its source. What I've witnessed thus far discourages direct confrontation."
"You desire insights about the future? I propose you find yourself a world of seers."
"I was there recently. Theros. It's why I'm here."
"You plumbed the thoughts of another like you?" Varina detected a shudder of excitement.
"That I did." Ashiok revelled in the memory (or the memories of Ashiok's victim). "Elspeth."
"How archaic."
"Her nightmares were beautiful. She showed me these twisted horrors. The Phyrexians."
"I may have a lead. This way." She left her throne.
Ashiok floated up to Varina's trophy case, also bone. Ashiok recognized a number of off-plane designs classified in transparent compartments, separated to prevent cross-contamination.
"This arm was removed from a Phyrexian corpse I previously reanimated from a potential timeline. The barrier around it keeps its components inert. You wouldn't want to touch it while it's active."
"Mechanical improvements…" Ashiok studied the appendage, without eyes to study it.
"Through my own research, the Phyrexians are creatures of living and dead tissue bonded to artificial prostheses. Highly infectious and highly dangerous."
"Yes, Elspeth's flashbacks portrayed them in this manner."
"Are you familiar with the name Karona?"
"No."
In all likelihood, the nightmare artist was lying. Deception was Ashiok's modus operandi. Nonetheless, Ashiok humoured her, so Varina humoured Ashiok.
"I am short on the particulars of who she was, but prior to the Mending, I saw scenes of Karona. They branded her insane because she's stated to have met the Phyrexian god, who they swear perished at the end of a bloody invasion. My theory, accounting for the temporal disturbances involved, is she spoke to an alternate version of the killed individual, who survived the failed invasion."
"The Phyrexian god rots in the ground? Yet his acolytes still skulk the Multiverse?"
"His creations must've reactivated. Unless it's the old Phyrexians your Elspeth dreams about."
"Thank you for the information, my dear Varina. But knowledge is such a burden. Why not give me everything you know?" Ashiok grew inspired. "Release it. Release all your fears to me."
Not one to accept threats, she commanded the zombies she pre-stationed to beset Ashiok.
None responded.
"You slipped. Hiding your soul in that mask you always have in hand? It's become such a part of you, you didn't realize you're not holding it. We've been having this conversation in your head while you've been asleep for minutes."
"Deceiver!"
"I've long wondered what it is you fear." Ashiok peeked, swimming through her psyche.
In the waking realm, Varina's brain exploded inside her skull, black flecks dissolving off her now fully dead face.
Ashiok crushed her mask, the amplification totem housing her power.
The perfect swan song.
"To think some believe it peaceful to die in one's sleep," Ashiok's laugh was cacophony.