Story 01: Teeth of Ashmouth

Teeth of Ashmouth
Heat, warmth, dirt. Those were the first sensations that came back to Thane’s sense of touch. He felt disoriented, but no worse than how he’s felt the past few days, since the attempt to reclaim seagate failed. The white haired boy groaned, squeezing his eyes shut before slowly opening them, expecting a barren, chalky white landscape, signature of Ulamog and his brood. Instead he looked up and found dark, almost black soil and a low red glow coming from, put simply, a hole in the ground.
“A volcano?” Thane clarified, his voice rattling with groggy effort, more for himself than the no one around him. That wasn’t right, they weren’t anywhere near a volcano. He closed his eyes, doing what he could to remember what was going on.
They were fighting the eldrazi. Horrifyingly ugly monsters that seemed to consume all and drive everyone crazy. They were swarming the open field where they were making their final stand. The allied commanders had an insane plan to kill not one, but two of the largest titans, Ulamog and Kozilek themselves. A brief wind blew over him, chilling the zendikari boy. Despite the common sense most would have about the situation, the boy pushed himself up and walked towards the open caldera, feeling the heat wash over him as he sat down closer to it’s gaping maw. It was strange, Zendikar wasn’t ever this cold. Then again, he was from Akoum, so even Ondu felt cold to him at times.
The plan was insane, but some kind of commando mages called the Gatewatch or something was sure it would work so he volunteered to help. And for a while it worked. Then something went horribly wrong or horribly right and it seemed like the world itself turned into an eldrazi as they rained from the sky. He lost track of Seigri, then…
“Seigri!” the brown boy shouted, shooting up to his feet as he remembered. His elvish companion through most of the past year, his guide from Akoum to Valakut, and companion as they fled and fought the eldrazi. She was with him during that last fight, and that explosion of eldrazi shook the plane and then...he blacked out and woke up here.
“Were there too many?” He asked, sliding his hand through the black ash covered dirt. Why wouldn’t it be? Wouldn’t there be a great nothing if the eldrazi won? Yet here he was; whole as far as he knew, touching solid ground that wasn’t chalk dust or bismuth. “Well, only one way to know.” He took a deep breath before bonding with the land. It was quite possibly the easiest thing to do. The simplest, easiest way to gather a source of mana. Almost as expected, the white mana normally found in plains that he used to keep the land tame before the eldrazi was almost devoid in the area. It was dark, save the molten glow of magma coming from the hole. As expected, red mana was plentiful, and easy to gather. But for the ease of drawing red mana from the area, he could feel a lot more of the pleasingly corrupt feeling of black mana. And unlike most black sources he felt, this one was sticky, practically leaping at him. He severed the connection before the mana could consume him instead, his heart pounding in his ears and his breathing heavy.
“Well that settles that.” he muttered, standing up and dusting the ash off his hand. “This isn’t Zendikar.” Nowhere, not even the swamps of Guul Draz had such overwhelmingly eager black mana. The whole place felt wrong. Both in a mana sense and in a foreboding sense. He wasn’t sure where he was, but this clearly wasn’t the place to be even if it was currently free of eldrazi. He took the mana he had and threw it back into the ground, and was immediately rewarded as the once solid ground cracked and bubbled red as it turned molten before dividing itself into three figures. A trio of quadropod creatures, made of  a mix of hardened and semi-hardened magma half his height crawled out of the ground. They weren’t the sturdiest things, but they’d do for travelling partners.
The rest of the area disagreed though. The caldera shook with unearthly howls. Thane took a few steps back from the glowing hot hole, reaching back into the land and embracing a bit of the rampant black mana. He watched the edge as an elemental walked over the edge of the caldera, resembling a molten black wolf cloaked in flame. The source of the howl if he had to guess.
“That is a really interesting thing.” Thane said to himself, even as he willed his own elementals to charge it, to overwhelm it before it could catch sight of him and attack. All three of his magma creatures skittered at the wolf on their four legs, leaping onto it and trying to stab it with the hardened tips of their legs while the wolf struggled and shifted, throwing them off, trying to set them ablaze, swiping with it’s own claws and biting them. It was having more success than they were.
He had the mana he needed to finish the beast off, but held off for just a moment, watching the way the beast fought, getting a feel for it and it’s rage. Even as it pinned a second of his elementals and bit it and pulled, tearing the thing in half like an actual dog would. It was a great creature, the likes of which he’d never seen at home. He’d love to have tamed it and learned more about it. But he learned what he needed to know. He focused the dark mana’s of the area, mixed in with his own, and channeled them into the land underneath the beast. The ground reacted. It was far less than he was used to, but it reacted nonetheless. The earth shook and cracked underneath the wolf, rising up in huge slabs and spiky uprisings. He watched as the beast fell into the small upwelling, likely to get shredded or crushed by the shifting land as it picked itself up, rearranging itself into a large hunchbacked stone elemental with thick and heavy arms. Thane frowned.
On Zendikar, that spell would of resulted in an elemental large enough to punt a baloth. Something he could sit on and ride, and likely would have torn a chunk out of the caldera too. This one was barely larger than a gnarlid or bear and dripped with the molten “blood” of the elemental it killed when it was forming. A small fact that Thane appreciated he found out now instead of when he used the spell on a living target.
“Wherever I am, it doesn’t react as well, does it?” he asked himself. It was strange. Roil magic was powerful, forcing the plane to react to an irritant with what was usually explosive results. This elemental was practically half the size it should have been. “What is wrong with this place?” he asked out loud, turning to get away from the molten hole in the ground and willing his remaining two elementals to follow. Questions raced in his mind, but he wasn’t going to find anything out just standing around. Hopefully he could find someone to talk to and get answers then.
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It was definitely getting louder the more Thane continued on. After hours of operation nothing but the sound of his and his elementals footsteps Thane was eager for contact with other beings, whether human, elf, kor. At this point he'd be happy to run into goblins or vampires. Maybe. Still the sound of combat was clear, the vibrations being sent clearly through the mountains. Thane continued his run through the precariously jagged mountain range, hoping to offer his assistance and group in exchange for information or transportation. Or just somebody to travel with who vaguely knew the area. He reached down to his waist and pulled his curved shortsword, already channeling his mana out of the ground around him as he rounded the corner.
Sure enough around the bend there was a trio of armed soldier looking types fighting against a duo of huge furry top-heavy beasts, defending a horse drawn carriage. They were also losing if Thane had to weather a guess. Most would have stopped and tried to consider if it was worth it to get involved, but to Thane there was no question. People needed help, and any time someone needed something it was an opportunity.
Thane dragged his hand across the ground, channeling his gathered mana  through the mountains and rocky cliffs, pulling big, heavy stones out of the ground and walls around him in an unsubtle orbit around him. He slid forward, the ground under him rolling and pulling him forward as if it was nothing but rolling balls underneath his feet. For as fast as Thane rushed forward, his elemental was faster, tackling one of the beasts with a satisfying impact.
The being howled in pain and rage, pushing  back at the earthen golem, swiping at it’s solid form with it’s bloody claws.  It was a harsh strike, breaking the connection on the elementals arm, surprising for a being of flesh against a being of stone. It was no wonder the beast was so top-heavy if all of that was muscle. The white haired boy responded in kind, thrusting his hand at the wolf-beast and willing a couple of the large boulders at it. They served as a particularly dangerous distraction. Forcing the creature back long enough for the elemental to work up a heavy blow to the wolf-beasts chest, this time with the lovely sound of a sickening crunch, the many rib-bones breaking and cracking losing against the fist of stone.
With the beast down, Thane pulled on more of the mana out of the ground and split it in half, sending some of it into the wounded elemental, repairing and increasing it’s size. Taking the rest of the mana, Thane turned to the older soldiers, both of which were doing better against one wolf-beast instead of two. Still, fair fights were for the weak. He took the remaining mana and sent it into the ground, working the ground underneath the beast and breaking it off of the cliff, forming a whole new earthen golem as the wolf-beast jumped weakly toward stable ground, and right into the ready spears of the soldiers. They stuck the monster through the chest, and it struggled even as they pushed harder on their spears. It was definitely going to die, but if there was ever something he learned fighting the eldrazi, it was that monsters on their deathbeds were the most dangerous. It was a bit preemptive, but he imagined the soldiers wouldn’t mind when he willed the second golem to grab the flailing, stabbed beast, and heaved it over the size of the cliff face. Thane smiled at the duo, as his larger golem from the caldera pinned the heavily broken but still live wolf-beast to the ground with it’s heavy stone foot.
“Hello!” Thane said with a wave, taking a deep confident breath before approaching the trio of soldiers catching their breath. “It is a pleasure to mee-” he stopped immediately as one of the soldiers, the young, female, red headed and somewhat rosy tinted one, stuck her spear towards him threateningly.
“Hold demon.” she started, “Geist, whatever you are.” Thane was surprised to say the least. Hostility wasn’t really the response he was expecting here. Almost with a roll of his eyes, he slowly raised his hands up to his chest, palms outward in a position of surrender.
“Hold yourself, I’m not a demon.” he objected, staring straight into her eyes. “I’m just a gifted roilmage lost in the mountains who needs help finding out where I am.” He explained, a half-cocked smile still on his face.
“Don’t be coy.” she ordered, her tone a bit more firm than the first time. The ground doesn't just float like a geist on its own. Whatever you are, you aren't human.” Thane made a small humming noise.
“And if I was a demon or geist, would I have helped save you from these wolf-beasts?” He asked, loudly drawing the attention of all the soldiers. Good, focus on him. While they were giving him the attention, he willed the first stone golem behind the group.
“Hold Diana.” the next soldier, an older, grizzled, peach tinted type of man much larger than himself ordered. She turned to him, in protest, before he laid a firm looking hand on her shoulder. “He's no demon.” he explained, looking Thane up and down, his other hand resting on the hilt of his sword. “A demon would have asked for something before helping us, and he's too flesh and blood to be a geist.” Thane took a sigh of relief. At least someone had some kind of sense to them.
“Then how do you explain his magic?” The woman, Diana, objected. “If not for spirits, then what would give this boy the power to move stones like a spirit possessed them?” Thane almost protested to the ‘boy’ comment, especially since she didn’t look much older than him, but held his tongue, a quick idea crossed his mind at that point, if she was so sure he was some kind of geist-spirit thing, then why not play exactly that role?
“Okay, you have me.” The brown skinned young man answered, taking a step back, “I am what you would call a geist.” As expected, the female soldier braced herself even more at his ‘confession’ and Thane knew he had to play it carefully. “I was a spirit wandering these mountains, then one day I found this boy being attacked by a demon and I decided to help, so I asked him to let me in and he did. I have been bonded to his body ever since.”
“Uh-huh. So you’re not a demon. Just a geist-possessed abomination.” she accused, rather harshly in Thane’s opinion. “So where is he?” she asked, “If you were helping him, why are you in control now?”
“His mind was too far gone.” Thane lied, unblinkingly as he looked her in the eye. Liars tended to avert their gaze, their body language giving them away. “The demons wanted his body. He let me have it so they could not. He is gone.”
“Sir Roderick?” the redhead asked, it was a request, possibly to execute him right there. He didn’t display it much, but tightened control over his two elementals, just in case they tried something.
“At ease.” the man, now identified as Roderick answered, “I don’t think this geist means us harm.” The man rubbed his stubble thoughtfully, “Besides. It did rush to our aid. We should be grateful of that at least, if nothing else.” With that Thane relaxed a bit, loosening his spell just a bit, even as he put his hands down, hooking his thumbs over his belt at his hips.
“I thank you.” Thane offered, nodding to the man. “I would like to ask where you are travelling. I have seen enough of these mountains to last a lifetime.”
“Or two in your case, I assume?” Diana added, it seemed like she was trying to make joke, but her tone of voice still carried a healthy amount of nervous suspicion. He smiled a her anyway.
“True.” he answered. “I was hoping I could join you on your travels. At least until we returned to civilization.” It didn’t seem like too much of a request, but with how hostile the female soldier had been, it was entirely believable to him that they’d refuse to bring him around potentially untrained people. Surprisingly it was the redhead that spoke up first.
“Aye, you can come along.” she answered, finally standing up straight and  holding her lance in a more “at ease” position. “We’re travelling to the capital city of Thraben, where it’ll be safer. The wagon’s full of refugees who wanted to come along ever since vampires overran their town.” Thane paused, that was too easy. Apparently Roderick thought so as well.
“Diana…” he questioned, trailing off for the lance wielding girl to explain herself.
“Well if he’s a good geist like you think we can’t leave him out here to turn evil, now can we? If he’s a bad geist and lying to us, then the exorcists in Thraben can handle him better than we could.”
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies in stabbing distance, is it?” Thane asked, “I can appreciate that.” His sentence was punctuated by a loud, wet squelching noise somewhere behind him. The soldiers both shifted to look over his shoulder, where no doubt the first, larger golem of his had fully smashed through the chest of the wolf beast, finally killing the wounded monster.
Thane only grinned wider, hoping to appear as non-threatening as possible to his new traveling companions.