Urza - Survives the destruction of Tolaria

Urza stood beyond it all. He had been beside the time portal in the white-hot instant that it exploded. It had taken every ounce of his metaphysical might to gather the particles of his being against the massive waves of power. As mote by mote of matter was blown away from him, he slowly became a being of pure energy. He resolved himself again and again in the first heartbeat of that hailing storm.

In the second heartbeat, he risked it all by reaching out beyond the rolling envelope of destruction and snatching them up, one by one—perhaps not his best and brightest, but those nearest, those who could be saved. Mage Master Barrin was first (yes, the silver man, Karn, had done what he was sent to do, had averted the Phyrexian invasion, though even the facts of that other time loop were as difficult to hold to and reassemble as Urza’s own body was), then five other scholars, and eight students. He whisked them up with him in a sudden, spontaneous planeswalk. They would not survive the journey in human form, he knew, and took a moment to transform them all into stone. It could be undone later, when there was time, when there was strength….

Ravening beams streamed past Urza and his company of statues. The death throes of his latest dynamo flung out shrapnel of every conceivable thing. Metal and stone and bone and brain and even mind tore repeatedly through them. Urza held fast against the storm. He rose. He took the others with him.

Now they were…where?

The hillside was sunny and green. A gentle, heather-smelling wind strolled easily past the fourteen statues. Urza had saved himself and fourteen others—which meant that more than two hundred were left to die.

***

Urza cast the last enchantment he held. It was his final saving act on that afternoon, for he was spent. He would not be able to maintain his physical coherence much longer. It was a feat of will to cast that last spell, to transform Barrin back into flesh.

Stone became bone and muscle and blood. Barrin awoke.

Brows knotted darkly above his intense brown eyes, the man staggered through tall grass to reach Urza.

***

Time Streams, Chapter 6