SH MTG AU

Kaj awoke with his dream already fading from his mind. It felt familiar, like he had this dream before, but sometimes it felt like the feeling of reoccurance was also a part of the dream itself. Kaj made mental notes to assure himself that he remembered the dream, so it wouldn’t fall into obscurity.

He remembered Shadowrian as a small rural town where the sun never shined, where the trees softly glowed in the night, and the stench of blood and rotting corpses chased him as he desperately tried in vain to run. Sometimes in his dreams he got lost. Sometimes his legs became heavy and prevented him from moving. Everytime, the zombies caught up to him. He always awoke then.

Kaj arose from his bed and threw his clothes on before heading out of his room in Renaud’s modest house. It was small, and was lucky that only one of its inhabitants needed a separate room to sleep, but it was far nicer than the wooden shacks the other humans of Havengul lived with. Living with Renaud had its other perks as well, the main one being that he was safe from becoming the next meal of the other vampire lords who lived nearby.

In the small dining room was Kaj’s breakfast already laid out for him and Renaud at the other side of the table, reading some book to pass the time. Breakfast was, of course, a loaf of bread and an apple. Though Renaud was kind to allow Kaj to live with him, he didn’t put up much of an effort to diversify his meals. Didn’t see the point, being a vampire himself.

“Good, you’re up,” Renaud said as Kaj picked up the bread and began eating. “We’re visiting the stitcher today. Get you a new skaab to fight.”

Kaj did his best to hide his disappointment. This was a new thing with Renaud, having him fight various geists and zombies. He claimed he wanted Kaj to be strong. At first that meant magic, but Kaj had little penchant for it, and Renaud had little penchant for teaching. It inevitably ended with Renaud giving up and proclaiming “We’ll try it again when you’re older!” But Kaj was an adult now, and the excuse wore off. Renaud’s new hypothesis was that with enough battle stress, the natural magic within Kaj would show itself.

Kaj had never once used magic in his life, which was probably why no matter how hard Renaud tried, he would never use magic. He wasn’t even sure why the vampire believed him to have a wealth of magical potential, given that most humans didn’t either.

With Kaj finishing his bread and fruit, the vampire got up and silently grabbed his cloak from a nearby hanger, making his way to the door before he finished draping it over himself. He seemed particularly eager today, unusally so. Kaj grabbed his own cloak and followed, knowing he shouldn’t linger too far behind.

The stitcher greatly unnerved Kaj. For good reason, reanimating an amalgamate of sewn together bodies would unnerve any relatively normal person. But any time he was around dead bodies, regardless of whether they moved or not, Kaj felt an overwhelming urge to run, hide, and cry to himself. He, thankfully, no longer did so every time Renaud felt the need to make him fight the skaabs, but the feeling never got better. He only got better at controlling that urge and hoping Renaud would save him if it came to that.

The two entered the stitcher’s small hovel, disguised as an apocathary’s shop in the front. Kaj couldn’t imagine the necessity to hide, as the church rarely bothered Havengul, but he supposed some caution was for the best. The stitcher himself was old, with long, white, twiny hair and a pair of small round spectacles on his nose. Despite his age, his hands never shook, probably a good thing given his profession.

Renaud handed the stitcher a large wad of money, much more than he would have needed. Kaj watched in facination as the stitcher counted each bill slowly, but he knew better than to ask. Some under the counter favor, no doubt. Or perhaps he ordered a special kind of zombie today for Kaj to fight. He shivered.

The stitcher nodded. “And one more for today?”

Renaud grunted.

The stitcher looked at him and Kaj and smiled, waving them into a back room. Lying on a cold metal cart was a humanshaped figure draped in a white cloth. Renaud lifted the cloth to reveal a withdrawn, putrid face, its jaw hanging open and eyes soft and rotten. Kaj’s chest filled with a pang of fear at the thing.

Renaud nodded and put the drape back over the corpse. “It’ll do. Kaj?”

Kaj numbed his mind as he always did when Renaud wanted him to get close to the zombies. It was easier than building courage. He walked over to the cart and began to push it out of the room, slowly, his eyes never leaving the draped body in front of him. And so he stayed like that, in silence, as he and Renaud walked back to a field near the city’s borders, enough room for him and the skaab to fight.

He wondered what the extra money had been for. From what brief he saw, this skaab looked about as normal as a skaab could come. He would do the same as he always did: attempt to draw some magical power from within himself, fail, and then hack the skaab to pieces using the rusted sword Renaud provided him. Or perhaps beat it to re-death with his bare hands if Renaud was feeling particularly cruel.

Kaj stopped cold just outside of the field, suddenly realizing that he no longer heard Renaud’s steps from behind him. Kaj double checked that he was at the right place, and indeed, it was Renaud who had gotten lost. They had come to this field dozens of times, but Kaj had numbed himself so much that he was oblivious to anything happening around him. The drape atop of the corpse fluttered, making him jump, but it was only the wind.

Uncertain, Kaj looked around. Should he simply continue, defeat the skaab, and return home? Should he look for the vampire?

As if answering him, he heard a rustle in some nearby bushes. Another zombie got up from behind it, and slowly started walking towards Kaj. His heart raced as he realized it wasn’t just one zombie. It was two, three, five, ten… Kaj instinctively let go of the cart and turned to run, when he realized even more zombies had cut off his path. How did that happen? Was he so lost in his mind that he had wandered into an entire hoard of zombies and hadn’t even realized it?

Kaj turned down the field and started running in the one direction zombies weren’t popping out from. His nightmare was real, and he prayed that he wouldn’t suddenly forget how to run like in his dreams.

Kaj tripped over something, and he realized it was a skeletal hand unburying itself from the ground. He screamed and tried to untangle himself from the arising corpses, but he had no where else to go. The zombies from behind were closing in, and those in front were appearing from the ground at staggering numbers. Kaj crouched, his legs betraying him and shaking so bad he could barely keep his balance. He needed to run. He needed to get away, anywhere, however he could.

Run away…

Far away…

He could almost see a large, sprawling city before him. A place without skaabs, where people didn’t live in fear of monsters. And just as he saw it, the zombies ripped it away, clawing at him with dozens of rotting arms and exposed bones. Kaj screamed as he was suddenly back in the real world, about to become a corpse himself by the side of the road.

And then they stopped.

“Useless, useless!” It was Renaud, yelling at him from somewhere nearby. Kaj didn’t dare raise his head to look. “Can’t you do anything!? How can you possibly be one of those things if you can’t even run away properly? Use it! Use your magic!”

Kaj trembled and gripped the hood of his cloak over his head. Was this some kind of test? Did Renaud actually believe that siccing dozens of zombies on him, reliving old trauma, would spark something inside of him? The vampire was a dumb, cruel fool, and the only thing Kaj would be good for would be his next snack. He didn’t dare get up. He was afraid of Renaud, afraid of the corpses surrounding him. He didn’t want to die with dignity, he wanted to be away from it all.

He felt Renaud kick him in the back, sending Kaj to his knees. Kaj just continued to hide in his cloak.

“Pathetic! Do it!” Renaud kicked him again. Kaj shook as he waited for more insults and assaults, but surprsingly they stopped after that. After several painful moments of silence, Kaj peeked out from his hood and saw Renaud staring off into the distance, fingers rubbing his chin in contemplation. A strain of curiosity caught Kaj as he watched to see what Renaud would do next.

The vampire then looked back down at him, causing Kaj to withdraw again.

“Come on, you’re coming with me.”

Renaud tugged on his cloak, but Kaj just remained on the ground, unwilling to move.

“Oh for Hell’s sake…” Kaj could hear the vampire mumble some incantation, and as he finished, felt all his strength leave his body. He tried to use his arm to stabilize himself, but fell to the ground anyway. Renaud, with surprising strength, picked Kaj up and threw him onto his cart where the skaab had been moments before.

Kaj couldn’t see where he was being wheeled off to, but he had a hunch. He tried to move and struggle, but his body felt heavy. His mind desperately tried to force himself to move, but he couldn’t. It was like he was stuck between wakefullness and sleep, with neither state winning over him. It wasn’t long before he was rolled into an all too familiar building.

“Back so soon? Ey… what’cha do to ‘im?” The stitcher’s voice wasn’t expressing concern, but curiosity. Kaj’s mind panicked as he knew all too well what many possibilities could happen here, and none of them good. But his body could barely twitch atop the cart.

“He’s broken!” Renaud yelled, nearly spitting in rage over Kaj’s face. “Nothing I do will get him to use his magic! I know it’s in there! I know it!”

“Renaud, I’ve told ya… Yer insane!” The stitcher laughed. “Whatcha call him again?”

“P-Planes… hoppers!” Renaud said, his confidence wavering slightly. “Don’t be dumb, you know those rumors about Sorin Markov. Damn, the entire Markov family, turned to stone by some unknown assailant! No known suspects, no motive… Who the hell even has that type of power!? People not from here! And him!” Kaj assumed Renaud was refering to him now. “He says he’s from some ‘Shadowrian!’ You ever heard of a Shadowrian?”

“Shadowgren?”

“He insists it’s wrong!”

“He’s jus’ dumb. Ya picked ‘im up as a little whelp after all.”

Kaj could hear Renaud walking away from him, possibly to move closer to the stitcher.

“There’s powerful magic inside him, I’m sure of it! You must have some way to… to… to bring it out of him!”

Kaj panicked again, but the spell was as strong as it ever was. All he could do was continue to lay on his cold metal cart and whimper.

The stitcher was unbearably quiet. “I might have something,” he said. “But it might kill him.”

“Fine!” Renaud said. “He’s useless to me if he can’t planeshop.”

The stitcher chuckled, slowly. “Put him in the back. I need to get something.”

Kaj felt himself being moved again. He looked up to Renaud for a glint of any mercy, but the vampire didn’t even look at him. Kaj had lived with him for ten years, and during all that, Renaud had only cared about some power he didn’t have. What a life.

It didn’t take long for the stitcher to return. “This is magic I was planning on using for myself soon, but I think ‘aving a rat to test it on would be useful. It’s not somethin’ you want to mess up… The results are quite… undesirable.”

Kaj attempted one last time to move. He threw everything into breaking the spell: all his will, all his strength, he reached for whatever possible magic he was housing inside himself. Nothing. His muscles barely twitched. With one final breath, Kaj resigned himself to his misery.

At the very least, it didn’t sound like the stitcher had grabbed his surgeon tools. Instead, he seemed to be lighting candles, based on the slight warmth and warm light out of the corner of his eyes. So the old man could do more than hack things off and sew them together. Kaj relaxed slightly. Somehow, whatever dark magic was about to occur, it seemed more preferable than having his limbs sawed off in front of him.

The old man began his incantation. Kaj’s breath wavered, having no idea what the stitcher was saying. He could only stare up at the ceiling in anticipation. Would it hurt? Would there be demons? His heart pounded uncomfortably in his chest.

Then, a terrifying chill crept onto his back, between his shoulder blades. It was colder than any cold he knew, colder than the winter nights on the streets alone. The cold spread up his neck and down his back, reaching for the tips of his fingers and toes. It sapped the warmth from his limbs and head until it only remained in his chest, and then that too was gone. Kaj lay limp on the cart, too weak to scream, overcome with utter emptiness.

“Did it work?” Renaud said.

The stitcher chuckled. “It would seem so. Here,” he paused. “Whatever you think was inside him, is in this now. Hopefully extracting magic from a small crystal is easier for you to accomplish.”

The two sounded so distant. Kaj tried to remember what warmth even felt like, but somehow even the memory of it escaped him. He was so cold… so empty…

Like…

A void inside him.

Void… that word rang inside his head. It meant something… Void…

Void… magic… A voice he didn’t recognize kept repeating those words. Void magic… Void inside him…

And for a brief moment, Kaj was void.

And then he was Kaj.

And he was fucking pissed.

Kaj nearly stumbled off his cart, the spell holding him down suddenly gone. But the cold remained. Kaj barely kept himself from shivering, instead choosing to focus on the vampire and stitcher, and making sure they’d know they messed with the wrong person.

“What did you do to me?” Kaj growled.

The stitcher smiled smugly. “Apparently, made you more powerful than you could ever be as a human.”

Kaj decided to reply by throwing a punch to the old man’s face, but it was caught by Renaud. Again, the vampire showed a surprising amount of strength. But Kaj wouldn’t be stopped. Kaj was void. And so was his fist. It disappeared in a black shadow for a second, and then reappeared… inside Renaud’s hand.

Both Renaud and Kaj expressed utter surprise at their new gruesome entanglement. Kaj flailed about, trying to free his wrist from Renaud’s palm, until their struggling finally teared their flesh apart. Kaj’s wrist looked surprisingly unharmed, but the same couldn’t be said for Renaud’s limp pile of sinew he called a hand.

Kaj’s body attempted to betray him again. He twisted his head, pushing through the spell that attempted to control him, to see the old man attempting some form of magic to control him. Kaj couldn’t be controlled, he was void. He let himself go into the void again, and pop out from behind the old stitcher’s back. Suddenly, his neck seemed very snappable.

Renaud looked in horror as Kaj effortlessly killed his first victim. “S-Stay back!” he said, holding a glowing pendant above his head, slightly smaller than the size of his palm. Kaj paused, not because he understood what Renaud was doing, but because it seemed so random. Was the pendant a weapon? Renaud seemed to think it was important.

No matter. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t stop him. Kaj was void, and boy could void move fast. He pulled back for a punch, and made sure his fist was solid this time as he hit Renaud across the face. Whatever the old stitcher did to him, it sure made him physically stronger than before, as one punch was all it took to knock him out. The pendant lightly clattered across the ground. Kaj stared at it, curious. It seemed… important.

Kaj walked over and picked up the pendant. It glowed softly, a tiny ember of warmth. He held it tightly in his hand, longing for that warmth back. His anger chilled over and once again he was cold and empty. He leaned against the wall and clutched his pendant in silence. Kaj remembered that city he saw, with its brightly lit streets and people walking without fear of geists and zombies. He wanted to go there. Be away from Havengul and never return…

And then he was there. Kaj was frozen in shock. How…?

“Welcome to Dominaria!”