Nissa - Trapping the Titans 2

Vines of bright, verdant magic became visible, crisscrossing the land from horizon to horizon. They curled and stretched and rearranged themselves, coiling in toward the elf. The ground under Nissa's feet rippled with light, and Kiora saw that same light shining from the elf's eyes.

A great wind picked up and the sky dimmed. Kiora could see the mind mage watching the pattern of leylines forming down in the valley and under Nissa's feet. She could hear whispers of the telepathic communications between them, as if she were overhearing urgently conversing ghosts. Kiora caught indistinct words were about the shape of the glyph, the pattern of leylines, an unbreakable loop, a stable pattern of intense mana—

All at once, the pattern fell into place. A tripartite glyph a hundred feet wide appeared on the floor of the valley in fierce green fire. Miles-long loops of pure mana blossomed from the glyph, lashed themselves around the titans, and pulled.

Kozilek and Ulamog tried to lurch away, to wrench themselves free from the land—and they did not just lurch back, Kiora noted, but up. The entangled titans drew themselves up to their full heights, and for a long moment, as winds lashed the landscape, it looked as though they would simply pull free of the leylines. The slack in the loops of mana disappeared as they pulled higher and higher.

But then the leylines snapped taut. They held fast, straight lines anchoring the titans to Zendikar.

The Eldrazi titans' shriek was tectonic. The earth slid, ripped, and undulated. Cracks erupted in the ground and shards of broken terrain tore their way to the surface as the land bucked and heaved. The elf's spell had actually managed to make contact with the titans, and this was their reply—the kind of reply that broke worlds.

All around, Eldrazi attackers appeared, jaws clacking. Kiora swept up onto a new outcropping of land and pushed back a wave of marauding Eldrazi with her own wave of seawater. As wind whipped at her fins, she called on the mana to summon a leviathan to her side, but she could feel the land resisting her call. Almost every drop of mana was being soaked up before Kiora could draw on it.

The elf's spell held the titans in place, but at the cost of absorbing all of Zendikar's mana. Would she let the land go to ruin to trap them?

"Nissa!" shouted the mind mage over the winds. "Pull them! You have to pull them onto the glyph, to drain them!"

Kiora saw the elf straining, her arms outstretched, channeling the leylines through the spell and through herself. She swept her arms from ground to sky, and a fresh set of leylines lashed onto the titans. The land lurched with effort.

Something deep in the earth cracked, but somehow Kiora heard the sound coming from overhead.

Motion in the sky drew Kiora's attention. Around the mighty titans, the sky bulged and folded like a brewing storm. But this was not a thunderstorm—this was something else. The color of the heavens twisted from hazy blue to boiling magentas and greens. The sunlight wavered, overshadowed by a spreading, rippling, polyp-like texture. And to Kiora's shock, she saw what was happening to the titans—

Bending, distorting, stretching.

Their heads inflated and curved into elongated necks that rainbowed across the sky.

Their faces widened, curved concave, and unfolded to the horizon and back again.

And then it began raining Eldrazi.

***

ZENDIKAR'S LAST STAND