For no mere mortal can survive the evil of the thriller.
I will now continue to dissect Duskmourn: House of Horrors alive and screaming, for your pleasure. Because this is time-consuming, I only know people are enjoying it if they comment, and that means I really am holding future DVD extras hostage against comments. Sorry about that.
Welcome to the “DVD extras” for the final main story installment for Duskmourn: House of Horrors, “Don’t Die.” This story is copyright Wizards of the Coast, although it was written by me, and can be found in its entirety here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/episode-six-dont-die
Give them some clicks. Convince them that you love me and I should get to keep writing things. Seriously, though, please click the link, even if the story isn’t relevant to you. Click-throughs are how Wizards knows that Story matters.
So what is this? This is little excerpts of the story, with my thoughts on them, because, IDK, I thought it was funny. I’ve also tried to include context for people new to Magic Story, to help you understand what the hell is going on. If people continue to like it, I will probably continue. If you don’t care about Magic Story, skip on over, although I’d still like it if you clicked.
And here we go!
As always, from this point on, plain text is bits from the story, italic text is my commentary on the same.
We’re at the end now. This is why I said the finale was next in the extras for episode five, since I don’t control when the side stories are posted.
I don’t get to see the stories presented in their “natural setting” until you do, and so didn’t realize how choppy the transition between five and six would really be. Basically, read as everyone having been knocked out again, and now waking up.
Drumming wasn’t really an art form in Meletis. Unlike so many other places on Theros, the drums of war had never been known to sound there; when there was a call to fight, it was set to the rhythm of pounding feet and clashing swords, not strikers on skins.
I really like calling back to where people, especially Planeswalkers or former-Planeswalkers, originally came from. It’s a good way to keep us grounded in the multiverse, and to explain the various words I’ll use to describe their interactions with the environment.
Niko had nearly jumped out of their skin the first time they heard the drums of Kaldheim begin to pound, calling the people of the plane to war.
Niko is from Theros, but spent a long, long time on Kaldheim, all things considered. They were there during the Invasion. They have heard the drums of war.
They still couldn’t move their hands or feet. Those were tied securely to the chair they had been positioned upon, feet pressed to the hard stone floor and wrists affixed to one another with ropes of rough hemp that bit into their skin when they tried to move their arms. They were well and truly caught.
Being knocked out again gave the cultists an opportunity to tie everyone up nice and secure.
The Wanderer was tied up to their right, her arms and legs bound in a manner like Niko’s. There was a table a few feet beyond her, pushed up against the wall of the room they had all been moved to, and on it their weapons were arrayed, placed with ritualistic care. The wall itself was some sort of dark wood, raw enough to be weeping trails of red-gold sap that smelled of sugar and death.
The House ate all the forests. It can get raw wood when it wants to.
The Wanderer’s eyes fluttered. Niko risked another glance around, taking in the rest of the room. There was a granite plinth at the center, roughly as tall as Niko’s waist, and a large stone altar against the far wall, streaked and stained with sap, and with blotches of something too dark to have come out of the walls. Niko shuddered.
Blood and sap, the secondary set title of this lovely house of horrors.
Those hard, angular chrysalises they had seen in the previous room were here as well, hanging around the top of the walls in nests of cottony white silk, twitching occasionally as their occupants stirred, either deep in dreaming or preparing to awake.
Niko didn’t want to be here when they hatched.
There’s no one you want to talk to in those cocoons. Note that the unnamed nezumi were also gone. They didn’t have the connection with Tamiyo to attract Valgavoth’s mercy. They were never the target.
There didn’t seem to be any slack in the ropes; Niko tugged to no avail before summoning a small shard, no longer than their pinkie finger, and beginning to saw at the ropes, making no real progress as the seconds ticked away. They glanced at Nashi again. His eyes were open, reflecting the dim, seemingly sourceless light that filled the room. He didn’t look frightened. More resigned to whatever was about to happen.
If Niko could throw the shard, they could use it to encompass the ropes, or one of their allies. With their hands bound, they’re more limited than they like.
“Nashi?” asked Niko. “Are you all right?”
“They’re all gone,” said Nashi. His voice was dull, almost hollowed out.
“The cultists? That’s good. It gives us a few minutes to figure out what happens next.”
“No. My friends. My mother. They’re all gone.” Nashi gave them a suddenly fierce look. “I came in here with four of the Reckoners I knew from back home. They wouldn’t let me go alone. They were all smart, and fast, and dangerous, and they’re gone. This House took them, but I led them here. Without me, they’d be safe with their families, and none of this would be happening.”
Nashi isn’t wrong. He’s also taking more of the blame on his shoulders than he deserves. No wonder he still blames the Wanderer for Tamiyo’s death. He’s been blaming himself. This is also where I point out a math error: there should have been six Reckoners, not four. My bad.
“You said they wouldn’t let you go alone. That means this isn’t your fault.”
“If I’m the reason, it’s my fault,” insisted Nashi. “When Mother’s scroll vanished, I just—I couldn’t refuse to follow her.”
He has a lot of work to do to learn how to deal with grieving.
“You followed her, and they followed you,” said Niko. “It sounds to me like the ones who stole your mother’s vessel are the ones to blame.”
“And joyously so,” said a new voice. Niko stiffened, turning their head as far as the ropes allowed in a vain attempt to see behind them. It didn’t work, but then, it didn’t need to, as almost immediately, the head cultist walked between them and the Wanderer, still carrying his book. “The moth is lured to the light, but the light is blameless. The moth is only doing what it must. Instinct and hunger control all things. Blessed be the threshold, blessed be the flame.”
The light is blameless. Okay, creepy guy. Go be creepy somewhere else, please.
A low murmuring broke out behind him, the other cultists echoing his words. Niko narrowed their eyes. They couldn’t tell whether Winter’s voice had been among the speakers.
Niko very much wants to kick Winter’s ass right about now.
“You are to receive a great benediction,” said the head cultist. He was an unimposing figure, soft-spoken and of barely medium height, his spectacles clouded by tiny scratches. He stopped between his captives and the plinth, opening his book. “Your knowledge will be added to the great list, and with it we will guide the Devouring Father to his next feasting place. All things will know the light of his attention.”
This is not turning down the creepy.
“Mother!” cried Nashi.
The shadow of Tamiyo turned her face away.
Tamiyo won’t even look at her son. That’s probably not an awesome sign, all things being equal.
“You carry the dust of as many worlds as there are rooms in paradise,” said the head cultist, focusing on Niko. “Places that have not yet known the threshold, have not yet felt the flame. Through you, we will be led to them. Through you, our Father will be able to plant His foundations, and he will feast.”
Basically, he’s going to loot them for their knowledge of the Planes, and use that information to guide Valgavoth to his next targets. Gee, that’s fun and not at all horrible.
“Stories are one thing, but to feast on the flesh of those who walked so very far—you are a blessing, and because this one,” he turned his attention on Nashi, smiling serenely, “called you to us, we will grant him the gift of rebirth. His cocoon has been prepared, and he will live eternally in the Devouring Father’s service.”
They’re going to straight-up kill and eat the various Planeswalkers and ex-Planeswalkers, and that sort of sucks for our cast.
“And what about me?” he demanded. “You promised me—”
“I promised you what I promised my Marina, so many years ago,” whispered a new voice. It was thin and wispy as the silk around the edges of the room, sliced into hundreds of layers that came together to form a terrible chorus. The pounding in Niko’s head fell silent, extinguished by the whispering. No other sound could survive where that voice spoke.
Enter Valgavoth.
“I promised you your heart’s desire,” continued the voice. A slow illumination dawned in the shadows above them, emanating from the body of what appeared to be an enormous moth spun from the fabric of nightmares. His wings were melded with the walls around him, their substance dipping in and out of the stone like it had grown up around him, and the sight of him was accompanied by a frigid, frozen cold that sank into Niko’s bones in an instant. The speaker turned his massive head, faceted eyes glinting as he looked solemnly at Winter.
Valgavoth is the House, and the House is Valgavoth. It’s all down to what he’s paying attention to at any given moment in time.
“It’s you,” said Winter, tone caught between awe and horror.
Valgavoth didn’t have the lips to smile, but he still managed to seem pleased as he nodded, feathered antennae twitching in time with the gesture. He extended one fibrous tendril of his own substance toward his high priest, nudging the man. It wasn’t a kick. The priest still lifted his head and climbed to his feet, standing next to his god.
All moths are butterflies, but not all butterflies are moths. The feathered antennae are the determining factor. The more you know!
“Yes,” said Valgavoth. “You know me. You have known me since I called to you in the darkness, for here I am the only source of light. You are the first since my Marina to answer my call with a proper sacrifice.”
“Yes,” whispered Winter.
Valgavoth offered to give Winter whatever he wanted in exchange for four lives sacrificed to the House. Marina did the same, and doomed a Plane. Winter is more ambitious. He’s dooming the multiverse. Good job, Winter!
“Four lives to secure your heart’s desire. Four thresholds for me to cross.”
Niko’s head snapped up. “The friend you told me about in the woods,” they said, making no effort to keep their voice low. “The one who’s gone now. Your best friend.”
“What about her?” asked Winter.
“There are only three of us.”
Good job, Niko.
Winter was silent.
“You sacrificed her to a monster for your own heart’s desire.”
“You’d do the same,” said Winter. “Spend enough time lost in Duskmourn, and there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to find your freedom.”
Winter wanted out so badly that he gave the person he loved most over to a monster, and it wasn’t enough. He just wanted to go home.
“Lies,” snapped the Wanderer.
“Truth,” said Winter. “When all hope is gone, only the truth remains.” He returned his focus to Valgavoth. “I would have given anything to finally get out, so I gave something better.”
“What?” asked Niko.
“I gave everything. Now let me go.”
I just really think “I gave everything” is a banger line, and I hate that it’s buried in the middle of this scene, so I’m bringing it to everyone’s attention.
This door was made of the same cherry wood as the others, the frame carved with moths and harvest wreaths, a full moon where the peephole should have been, the traceries of tentacles peeking out from around its edges. Winter looked at it like a starving man faced with a feast but didn’t move. He looked to Valgavoth instead.
Behold the door to Innistrad. After Duskmourn, it’s a paradise Plane.
“I can go?” he asked. “You promise?”
“I keep my word,” said Valgavoth. Winter rushed toward the door. Too quickly—he tripped on a crack in the floor and fell heavily, landing on hands and knees. Neither Valgavoth nor the cultists moved to help him as he pushed himself to his feet. They only watched, silently judgmental.
They aren’t going to stop him, but they won’t help him, either.
Niko strained against their bonds. They were still as tight as they had been in the beginning and showed no signs of slackening. From behind them, they heard the distinctive sound of wood slamming into flesh, accompanied by a yelp, and then a familiar voice drowned out everything else, as Tyvar boomed, “Bad form, to start the battle without us!”
Tyvar Kel, only person who’s actually having any fun here. Duskmourn has been like a trip to a whack-a-mole arcade for our big bruiser boy, and he’d be happy to come back for another round.
A cultist flew past Niko to smash into the wall, clearly having been flung across the room, and a terrible figure appeared next to them. It was shaped like Zimone, but unlike Zimone, it had skin made of water-damaged, splintered wood and rusting nails in place of teeth. It reached for them with its horrible hands, fingers like crooked hinges and palms like broken shingles, and Niko tried to shy away, moving as far as the ropes would allow.
Seeing a transformed Zimone when you’re not expecting it has got to be horrific. But she’s just trying to help.
Another cultist flew across the room, as the air behind them was shattered by shouts and peals of laughter. Tyvar, it seemed, was still having the time of his life. “At least someone’s having a good day,” muttered Niko.
Zimone offered them a horrible smile, the expression rendered nightmarish by the unfamiliar angles of her face. “I don’t think he knows how to have a bad day for very long,” she said.
Tyvar is here to give other people bad days, not to have bad days himself.
The ropes on Niko’s wrists loosened, and they pulled their hands free, whipping two shards out of the air and flinging them at the Wanderer. They sliced through the ropes holding her arms and legs to the chair, and she rolled out of the chair to the floor. Niko was ready with another shard, cutting her hands free as Zimone worked on the ropes holding their legs to the chair. The Wanderer stepped quickly and lightly over to the table with their weapons, recovering her sword.
Niko cut the Wanderer’s legs free, but had yet to free their own. Zimone is thankfully very helpful here, as they go into a major boss battle and need every hand they can get.
Just in time: Valgavoth had stopped roaring and was spewing clouds of acidic white webbing into the air. The Wanderer sliced easily through the webs as she virtually danced across the floor to Nashi, cutting him free and pressing a small, hard object into his hand. “You can change your fate,” she whispered, and then she was gone, charging toward the body of the massive demon moth.
Nashi finally has his fateshifter.
Winter tried for the door a third time, only for one of Niko’s shards to hit him squarely in the back and envelop him, sealing him away from the freedom he’d so craved. Niko glanced back to the sounds of the ongoing brawl.
Sorry, Winter. No Innistrad for you.
Tyvar was holding his own against a half-dozen cultists, skin rippling from flesh to stone and back again so quickly that it was almost like watching a cloud skate across the sun. He was laughing. Niko turned back to Zimone.
Just dancing in and out of his camouflage, with brief stops on other types of stone. He is having way too much fun here.
A cultist grabbed for her, and she slashed at him with hinged fingers, slicing through his cheek and driving him back, his face gushing blood. She moved toward Tyvar, pulling the box from Niv-Mizzet around in front of her and beginning to rapidly flip switches. Once she was close enough, Tyvar touched her shoulder, and the normal composition of her body came flooding back, chasing the temporary horrors away.
When Tyvar has you transmuted into something other than yourself, his magic suppresses your own. By dropping Zimone’s camouflage, he allowed her to use her own magic again.
The box immediately spilled a geometric cascade of blue and green lines into the air. They wrapped themselves around the nearest cultist and raced across his skin, multiplying exponentially, until he was swallowed by the light.
“Good capture!” shouted Tyvar encouragingly.
“I was top of my class in theoretical combat math,” said Zimone.
I just love the idea of theoretical combat math. Not too theoretical once you get the Quandrix involved.
She pulled another cascade of lines from the box, lobbing it carelessly at Tyvar. When it struck his skin, it began to lace together into a sort of knotted armor, which deflected the next blow that would have hit him. Tyvar blinked, then beamed.
Tyvar doesn’t necessarily need armor, but he’s happy to let a friend help him out.
“Behold the power of math!” he proclaimed, turning and punching the cultist squarely in the face.
And this is my favorite line from this episode.
Valgavoth roared. The Wanderer had leapt up onto the stone altar, and was dueling the massive demon moth, slicing through his clouds of caustic webbing, blocking his attempts to strike her with clawed limbs. Her sword didn’t cut through his deceptively spindly legs, but did knock them away from her, and as it absorbed more and more of the energy from his strikes, the blade began to glow a brilliant, blazing white.
The Wanderer can absorb kinetic energy and use it to enhance her own attacks. She’s sort of terrifying in any fight that lasts more than a few hits.
“They’ve been stealing my stories, Nashi,” she said. “Taking them apart and taking them away. I don’t remember the things they stole from me. But I remember you. I will always, always remember you.”
Every time the cultists forced her to tell them a story, she lost it. It was like they were ripping pages out of the book she had become. But Nashi was a target—they wanted him—so they didn’t take him away. Yet.
“Those stories were what let me exist in this form. They were my blood and breath and bones after all those things were lost, and now they’ve been taken. The people who took me have me connected to this ghost-trap to keep me here—that is the only thing keeping me here, Nashi. They are the only thing keeping me here. You can’t save me this time.”
It’s time to rest.
“Oh, my sweetest boy, there are stories whose endings can be changed, and those that can’t. My ending was written years ago. Your mother—your real mother—loved you so, so much, Nashi, she loved you so much that the story of her love is one of the only ones I haven’t forgotten. When they tried to take it, they found that without it, the rest of me would unravel and fade away immediately. They made me call out to you, Nashi, because you were the story that hung in my heart. They made me lure you here, hunters trapping the moon, and I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
This is not Tamiyo’s echo saying that Tamiyo wasn’t his real mother because he was adopted. It’s her saying that Tamiyo was his real mother, and she is not. “Hunters trapping the moon” is both a reference to the fact that she’s one of the moonfolk, and to the imprisonment of Emrakul on Innistrad.
“You can’t save me, but you don’t need to. You don’t need me, Nashi, not anymore. Look at what you’ve accomplished! You made a hero’s charge into the heart of a demon house to save the unsavable. And look at the people who came to help you, simply because you needed it. You are more loved than you can know. Now go, Nashi. Go, and be as spectacular as she always knew you would be.”
Let go and move on: live.
Nashi held up the small object the Wanderer had pressed into his hand. “She told me I could change my fate. She told me … I could …”
The fateshifters don’t work that way.
“No, my love. It doesn’t reach back far enough for that. My book is closed; my tale is done. I only ask one thing more from you.”
But how does Tamiyo know that?
“What?”
“Let me go.”
Nashi stared at her, silent and horrified.
She’s asking him to let her die. Again.
“I still have stories they could steal from me. Please, love, please. Let me go, so the work that was my life won’t be turned to evil any longer. Free me, dear one. Free me.”
For her it’s not death, it’s keeping Tamiyo’s legacy from being further corrupted by the horrors of the House. She knows it’s unreasonable; she still wants it.
Niko was fighting their way to the door, flinging shards into the bodies of cultists and stepping over those Tyvar had already felled. Tyvar was still swinging with reckless abandon, finally in his element as he battled the seemingly endless hoard. Zimone followed close behind him, guarding his back with her magic and machine.
Niko, grim, wants to go. Tyvar, really enjoying this boss fight. Zimone, enjoying the scary dog privilege of fighting back to back with someone who’s perfectly willing to have a go at punching out a functional god. Everything is awful.
Valgavoth roared, wings flexing. The walls shuddered, and cellarspawn and nightmares spilled out of them, pouring into the room. Tyvar grabbed Zimone, and the horror of the House swept over her again, transforming her. The magic stopped spilling from her box. She shot Tyvar a wounded look.
Forcibly transforming her cut off the magic she was channeling, but it also made her more physically resistant to taking a hit. He’s trying to balance safety and autonomy.
“It’s the only way to keep you safe,” he explained.
“None of us are safe,” snapped Zimone.
“True enough,” said Tyvar, and turned to beat back the nightmare squid creature that had been flowing toward them, tentacles grasping at the air.
Note that he didn’t take the transformation away.
Niko grabbed for the doorknob—an unknown plane would be better than this. They could find an Omenpath to get them out. Valgavoth roared again, and the door was gone, falling to dust under Niko’s fingers. They lifted their head to glare at the enormous moth demon, readying another shard.
Niko has never been to Innistrad, and had Valgavoth not removed the door, they would have been rudely disillusioned.
“For the threshold!” shouted the cultist and stabbed ruthlessly down.
The vocabulary of the cultists is all about doorways and moth stuff. It’s fun to explore.
Niko felt the blade pierce their eye and continue through the thin barrier of their skull, slicing through muscle and bone with equal ease, until it penetrated the tissue of Niko’s brain, disrupting thought and slicing memory away, until all was dark, and silence, and they were dying so far from Theros, they would never see the underworld, they would never reach the afterlife—
Poor Niko. They really don’t know if they want to go home, but they’re pretty sure they don’t want to die anywhere but Theros.
The world snapped like a tightened bowstring, and Niko was looking up at Valgavoth. They danced away before the cultist could grab them, slinging a shard that encased the man in gleaming magic. They were readying two more when they were grabbed from behind, yanked off balance.
And there’s the fateshift we’ve all been waiting for.
With a roar of triumphant fury, Valgavoth ripped one wing partially out of the wall, knocking the Wanderer to the ground before it was pulled back into the wood and stone. He pushed her fallen sword away with a tendril, the ceiling seeming to dip to the floor as he leaned closer to address her.
The House is a prison as much as it is a paradise.
“I will swallow everything you are, and I will unmake your world in my own image,” he hissed, voice suddenly soft. “You lose.”
Now he explicitly wants to hurt Kamigawa. And we know he knows how to open doors there. Okay, that’s not great.
“So do you!” yelled Nashi. Valgavoth looked at the young nezumi just in time to see him reach into the ghost-trap and lift Tamiyo’s scroll free. She smiled at him, tears running down her translucent face, before she dissolved into moonlight and was gone.
Yes, Nashi has done as the Tamiyo echo asked, and let her go.
“We don’t need her,” said Valgavoth. He turned his attention back to the pinned and struggling Wanderer. “Now I have all of you.”
He opened his mouth, revealing a maw filled with teeth like broken needles and shards of glass, then leaned toward the Wanderer again, preparing to bite down.
Valgavoth just needs to eat them and he’ll have everything they are. Not great.
There was a glimmer of blue-white light from the wall behind him, noticeable only because it was so out of place, and Valgavoth froze. He made a small choking sound and straightened again, filling the entire world. The House went still around him. He looked down at his chest. The blade of a katana protruded from it, glistening with ichor and hemolymph, glowing with bluish magical light.
Blue-white light. Where have we seen that description before? Oh, maybe in the hands of a formerly Azorius detective who can make exact duplicates of things he’s seen. Like doors.
The blade withdrew, leaving a leaking wound behind, and Valgavoth was jerked up as the webbing which supported him drew taut and yanked him toward the ceiling. The great demon’s removal revealed Kaito, holding his katana in both hands and breathing heavily. Behind him on the wall was a door formed from blue-white light; the frame was covered in a pattern of interlacing triangles, stylized dragons, and tiny moths that somehow invoked hope, where the moths scattered throughout the House invoked only despair. The entire pattern blazed brightly, beating back the gloom.
The door is meant to invoke Kaito—the dragons—Proft—the interlacing triangles, very similar to the Azorius guild seal—and Aminatou—the moths of hope, rather than despair.
The door slammed abruptly open, revealing a short hall on the other side, connecting to a second door. Proft appeared in the entryway, gesturing violently.
“Through here!” he shouted. “I can’t hold this for long!”
Yeah, even for Proft, spanning the Blind Eternities is a little bit of a stretch, and he doesn’t want to keep it up any longer than he absolutely has to.
They were almost there when a nightmare lashed out, clawed hand arcing toward Tyvar’s head. Zimone screamed. Half a dozen shuriken slammed into the hand, then pulled themselves free and flew back to Kaito, reassembling into his sword as he nodded to Tyvar and stepped through the door.
Kaito saves the day!
“Hurry, hurry,” said Proft, gesturing for the others to move quickly down the short hall. “This space isn’t exactly stable.”
Understatement of the episode.
“What is it?” asked Niko.
“An artificial Omenpath,” said Kaito. “My spark, Proft’s mind magic, Aminatou’s fate-twisting, and a piece of the House that I took with me when I had to planeswalk away. As soon as Proft lets it go, it will dissolve back into the Blind Eternities and be lost. I’d rather we not be lost with it.”
Basically, this is not a repeatable get out of jail free card. It took a very specific set of circumstances that we spent the whole story slotting into place.
Nashi stopped walking.
That can’t be good.
Nashi looked at the empty scroll in his hands. “Your body is on Kamigawa, with us,” he told it. “But your spirit belongs to the Blind Eternities. I know that. I hope you can rest now. I hope you know you did the right thing. Your story’s done, but mine’s just starting. I love you.”
He put the scroll down on the hallway floor and ran after the others, stepping with them out into the light of the Ravnican afternoon.
Letting Nashi lay his mother’s spirit successfully to rest was an important overall goal for this story, and one I’m truly glad he was able to earn and accomplish.
“You can put me down now,” said Zimone.
“Sorry,” said Tyvar, unrepentantly.
He is going to Protect His Mathematician.
“Tyvar, what are you wearing?” asked Kaito.
Tyvar looked at his vest, then shrugged. “Zimone said it would help me hide within the House. But there’s no need for hiding now.”
I’m glad someone pointed out the vest.
He shrugged out of the vest, looking to where the Wanderer and Kaito were standing with Nashi and Aminatou, Yoshimaru dancing around them in the ecstasy of reunion, his plumed tail waving wildly.
“It seems all has been revealed,” said Tyvar, almost philosophically.
Yoshimaru gets his girl again, and all is right with the world.
The wound in the great demon’s chest was still oozing viscous, unspeakable fluids, and Valgavoth hissed. He would need to feed, then return to his cocoon to heal. Life would renew him, and the stories his faithful had harvested would set anchors for his questing lures. All he needed was patience, and the prey would come. The prey always came.
The Survivors are going to pay for what happened here.
And not all of his prizes had escaped him. He reached into the attic above him, wrapping a tendril around a squirming, shivering bundle of orange fur and pulling it down into view. The creature snarled and bared its teeth. Valgavoth gave it a good shake, until it stopped trying to threaten him. This thing was valuable. It would serve him well.
So Valgavoth still has Loot. That’s,..probably not good.
Soon enough. Right now, he needed to stem the bleeding. He looked around the chamber, seeking a cultist with even a flicker of life remaining, and paused at the sight of Winter, huddled against the wall where the door to the cursed moon’s benighted land had been opened and abandoned. The man was loose, somehow, and unarmed. He would do well.
Valgavoth knew exactly what he was doing when he tried to send Winter to Innistrad.
“I promised you freedom,” said Valgavoth, in a voice like the creaking of an ancient foundation, heavy and old. “I will give you freedom. Of a kind.”
Pulling Winter higher to his leaking, punctured chest, Valgavoth melted into the ceiling, and all in the House was silence.
So Winter’s probably not dead, right? Right?
The Wanderer stood on the edge of the courtyard, Yoshimaru to one side, Kaito to the other, watching as Nashi spun the story of their adventures to a crowd of rapt youngsters. “He has a gift,” said the Wanderer.
“Yes, he does,” said Kaito. “None of these kids are going to go opening mysterious doors.”
Eyes glinting with mischief, the Wanderer looked at him. “Would a little horror story have stopped you, back in the day?”
Nashi getting to tell stories to kids and help them not get eaten by Duskmourn is about as happy an ending as he could have gotten under the circumstances.
Nashi glanced around, smiling at the pair, then returned to his story. Yoshimaru pranced in place, tail wagging, then lit out across the courtyard to the group of children, flopping to the grass next to Aminatou, who ruffled his fur with one hand as she continued to listen.
Aminatou gets to be a kid. That’s wonderful for her.
The others had gone with Zimone back to Strixhaven; Tyvar and Niko had seemed excited about the prospect of a game called “Mage Tower.” For a moment, they could pretend that everything was right in the Multiverse. That everything was okay.
Niko and Tyvar are going to kill at Mage Tower. Possibly literally.
At the very least, it was a beautiful day on Kamigawa.
And everything is okay. Honest.
With Niv-Mizzet’s mapping project finished and the Omenpaths largely secured, Proft and Etrata had been freed back to their normal duties, which for Proft meant late nights in his mental recreation of his idealized office, studying the evidence of his latest case.
The mapping project is never truly finished, but Niv-Mizzet can get enough nailed down that he’s pretty confident about what’s going on, and that he controls all the Omenpaths on Ravnica. That’s enough, right?
A flawless recreation of a broken statue was laid out in front of him in shimmering blue pieces, positioned like a jigsaw puzzle with several pieces missing, precisely as he had seen it earlier that day.
Proft, if you don’t know him, is one of the main characters of the Murders at Karlov Manor story, and I highly recommend giving it a read.
Even more slowly than it had appeared, the door swung open, and a cool wind blew through the office. Proft stiffened.
Proft touched Valgavoth. That means Valgavoth knows how to touch him back.
When he looked around, there was nothing there.
Next up, the post-mortem on this set story. See you there!
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