Jump 373: Zendikar

Jump #373: Zendikar
>Seven of Swords (Futility): A desperate attempt to resolve a matter without conflict. The use of cleverness or outright deception to turn the tide in your favor.
>Age: 30
>Location: Seagate
>Identity: Drop-In
>Race: Human
>Faction: Scholar
>Scenario: (+200) To Appease The World
If it ain't broke, fix it so it's better than new, because it's gonna break and we all know it.
>Drawbacks: (+700) Hedron Bound, Point Man, A Demon's Interest
Hey, I don't see what's so wrong with being put in front when it comes to dealing with the Eldrazi, as long as sufficient care is taken. It's rare that you see a higher-dimensional creature manifest in this way - if I use Flip! from Paper Mario I can get a better look at them, even! --oh shit they noticed me. Probably because I have a hedron attached to my forehead and I'm trying to figure out some way to re-cage them so they stop breaking the damned world. If this works on them, it might work on any destroyer of worlds!
>Chill of the Void (Free, Drop-In)
It's a good thing that I can toggle the feeling of unnaturalness about myself, but there are times where that will be handy.
>Manavore (1800, Drop-In)
So I can tap the land and use it to survive off of, if I need to. That's awfully useful. I do wonder how much I can tap before it starts hurting the land itself, though.
>A Direction Without A Name (1600, Drop-In)
Studying the Eldrazi while keeping in mind all I've learned from Zelretch leads to productive results. I'd argue that I could probably do this with sufficient learning, but let's not be remiss, I don't really have the time to do that over again for each new set of physics I encounter.
>A Good Eye (Free, Drop-In)
Surety is a must, as they say.
>Lithomancy (1000)
Lithomancy is something I could not possibly go without. Sensing what's in the ground is useful, forging raw magic into stone far moreso, and deeper studies continually unlock greater secrets.
>Dreamstone Hedron (900, Drop-In)
A useful bauble, sure, but more than that it's got the ability to hold a formidable amount of mana and replenish it.
>The Unreal Crown (700, Drop-In)
...frankly, this just looks cool. The fact that it lets me play with space and step in strange directions more easily is just a bonus.
>Hedron Staff (500)
In the hands of a lithomancer, this staff can ward off things that don't play nice with the local universe, and I'm a lithomancer. Studying this staff will help me understand the hedrons better as well.
>Network Notes (300, Scholar)
Oh, now this... this is the grand prize. With the Kaleidoscope, I could walk the multiverse. With this, I can seal parts of it off, turning planes into prisons if I had to. And considering the chains that bind the Eldrazi are weakening by the day... someone has to forge new ones.
>Old Friends (0)
I would be remiss if I didn't bring my companions to this place and give them a share of the power. They were a bit irate that they didn't get such during Kamigawa, if only a bit.

So... looks like we have a completely nomadic society because higher-dimensional Things From Beyond are chained here, but imperfectly, and in addition to that, some sort of contingency that chained a planeswalker has also chained me. Moment by moment, I can feel it draining my energy, and attempts to recharge that energy with various sources work only briefly before the drain slightly but notably quickens.

Delightful.

The Avatar link serves to mitigate that in part, though it seems that it simply means that the hedron on my brow has more to drain, intensifying the rate at which it operates. My initial estimates were that I had three years to work with, but with this... I have twelve months before I am rendered as a mortal, if I am lucky.

So without hesitation, I get started on trying to figure out quite literally everything I have access to. I've certainly got the incentive, no?

Before I can fix anything else, I have to fix myself, but to get enough power to fix myself, I need to find a way to overload it - if I starve it, it will still be there chaining me. I'm not going to try to open the gate of the Microverse Battery with the mana converter active - it'll give me infinite mana, what with it being a microverse overrun by Minecraft devices pumping out EMC that I can convert to whatever I need on demand, but I'm limited on its throughput. Tapping the lands that I have for mana can put that in a holding pattern without it being directly accessible by the hedron until I use it, but that has a finite lifespan. Indeed, nearly every time I use any sort of ability that I had taken for granted, I have to roll the dice or sacrifice another of my abilities to stave off the hedron's chains.

No, what I need to do is the most foolhardy thing that I could possibly do. Tap into the hedron network of Zendikar directly. I don't want to risk killing myself in the act - who knows the consequences of exposing my soul as it transitions to a new body? - so I will have to be very careful indeed. Fortunately... I can see the hedrons with mana-perceiving vision, so I can see how they work. I have notes and a knowledge of lithomancy that gives me sufficient insight into how they work.

I came across a planeswalker, one Nissa Revane, while I was mapping out the hedron network. She and I travelled together, fought and bled together (for I'd already sacrificed my regeneration in order to keep my magic), and eventually came across the spirit of the world together in the form of the Khalni heart. Though I could not speak to the world as she did, I could see the leyline network, and that gave me the last hint I needed in terms of figuring out the network, where the hedrons were, and where they could best be placed within the network itself.

Dealing with Ob Nixilis with her help was... still rather more difficult than I thought. And make no mistake, it was absolutely necessary to deal with him, because it was a matter of minutes after her discovery of the Heart that he came for us. By then, I no longer had telekinesis, nor my speed. But I still had my sword, and while it didn't kill him, it did cripple him by removing one of his wings, not to mention the blade's intrinsic magic harming him immensely. It was a sign of my increasing weakness spreading to all I owned that the blade didn't cripple or kill him, though. Nissa and I fled, and I filled her in on everything. My inadvertent trigger of a trap on coming to this plane, my intention to supplant the failing hedron network with a new one.

It took a great deal of talking, with both her and the other planeswalkers who had come to help her (unnecessarily) against Nixilis, but eventually they agreed and helped me over the course of the following half-year. And at the moment that everything came together at last and I was on the cusp of being rendered mortal... when the stone hedrons were being replaced by hedrons carved of obsidian and gold... Nixilis attacked once again. I worked to get the hedron network up with the last embers of borrowed power from my companions, from the land itself. He had prepared his attack, gathered allies, and tore through the planeswalkers, wounding them, causing Nissa to flee beyond.

We grappled as the network finally became active and poured power into me. Into the both of us.

The pain was overwhelming. In ninety thousand years I've never felt pain like that. Raw power coursing through me - through us both, in quantities and ways that were never meant to happen. For a heart-stopping moment we were flung beyond Zendikar into something that felt like nothing so much as the Kaleidoscope viewing everything simultaneously, stretching my brain almost to the breaking point, before being sent back to the sound of glass shattering.

I felt the familiar hum of my abilities, that I seem to continually take for granted until they disappear - and Ob Nixilis stood, looking at his hands, his form human. Then we looked up at each other. Neither of us had hedrons intact any longer, unchained by any outside force.

We did not bother to exchange words, simply laying into each other with our magics at once - lashing out with everything we had, no finesse, no regard for strategy, simply all-or-nothing. It was humbling to find how far I had to go to match a planeswalker on his level, let alone a higher level... and worrying. But Nissa returned in a matter of minutes, having rallied others to aid us, for the consequences of our failure would have been dire.

Eventually, Nixilis fled, swearing that he would one day return and his wrath would be felt. And he was addressing me, in particular.

In the end, Zendikar's roilstorms calmed, though they didn't disappear completely - bits of the planet's wrath focused upon the bits of Eldrazi that still kept sneaking out of their fifth-dimensional cage, far more limited in reach than they once were. But even at the end of the jump, Nixilis' threat worries me... then again, it's not like he can follow me, even though he's an Oldwalker and reignited his spark... right?