Liliana emerged from her fog, only vaguely aware that the boy crouching beside her now had hurt her! Her neck burned. Her hands were raw and bleeding. She reached over and grabbed him by the collar and growled, “What in Urza’s name do you think you’re doing?”
He fumfered out something about “your collar,” and she instantly released him to grasp at her throat. She was wearing the metallic collar of the prisoners of this place, and he had put it on her! She squeezed both her hands into fists and summoned a spell to reave his soul. Spectral clouds of purple-tinged black mana gathered as he scrambled backward. She aimed and unleashed the magic, which rushed toward the boy—only to be blocked by Gideon’s white aura!
Gideon?
No. Not Gideon. The boy had raised a diamond-shaped shield of white light. Perhaps there was a certain coincidental resemblance to Gideon’s aura of invulnerability—or perhaps Gideon was just on her mind. But she now remembered where she had seen this boy before. On Ravnica. She had seen him fighting her Eternals.
Not my Eternals! Bolas’ Eternals!
And not just him. His female companion, too. The one with her daggers out, ready to kill.
From behind his shield, the boy said, “I was just trying to remove your collar.”
“Really?” Liliana said darkly. “So the two of you didn’t come from Ravnica to kill me?”
Their quick exchange of a stunned glance told the story. Her memories were still hazy from whatever spell they had already attempted to place on her—or maybe from the collar—but she wasn’t going to die at the hands of these two incompetents. The boy was fairly well protected but clearly inexperienced. So Liliana would take down the woman first by summoning up more of the purple-black coalescing mist between her bleeding fists. The death magic burned where her raw skin had been cut, but she could fix that later when her enemies lay dead. She sent the dark, rippling energies forward. The woman dodged. But this was not a bolt of fire or lightning, soaring on past ad infinitum. The mist swirled back around to strike the woman from behind—only to be blocked once again by another of the boy’s shields.
“Sphere,” the woman said. “Over her.”
“But—”
“Do it, Teyo! Now!”
The boy nodded and dropped both his shields. Liliana saw her moment. Once more she gathered the dark power. And just as she unleashed it, she found herself completely surrounded by a dome of bright-white light. Her magic crashed against the wall of the boy’s construct and nearly doubled back on her; she was barely able to block her own power to save her life, and in any case, it knocked her back on her ass.
Shaking off the impact, and with her palms resting flat on the earth, she reached down, down, through the dirt and soil, past roots and earthworms and other detritus, until she found what she was looking for. She issued her summons, then struggled to find her feet, pushing herself to stand. The purple-black mist was just clearing, and through the white glow of the hemisphere, she saw the woman approaching with her long knives out. They glowed violet with their own spectral energy.
Liliana smiled grimly. They were coming, working their way up. Just a few more seconds…
“When I say now, drop the sphere,” the woman commanded. “And I’ll do the job I was sent to do.”
“I’d rather not,” the boy said.
“Teyo…”
“I think it might be best if I keep you both separated, at least until everyone calms down.”
Liliana’s mind was still foggy, but it almost seemed as if the kid was trying to protect her.
But that makes no sense. No one who’d survived the fighting on Ravnica would protect Liliana Vess, right?
The question instantly became moot as three undead corpses tore their way up through the ground and attacked Liliana’s two assailants.
The boy looked scared out of his wits, though he managed to retain enough of them about him to keep extant the hemisphere of light surrounding Liliana. He backed away as a rotting woman with considerable meat left on her bones shambled toward him, her jaw distended and hanging loose, her skeletal hands looking more like claws, ready to rend him to pieces.
The woman, meanwhile, stabbed her blades deep into the chest of the large decomposing man that had rushed her. Straightaway, Liliana felt her connection to and control of the zombie severed. It fell face-first like the corpse it was.
But Liliana pressed her final thrall forward, and this one presented the zombie-killer with more difficulties. It had clearly been feeding the worms for quite some time and was little more than a skeleton. The woman stabbed at it, but the blades swept through an empty rib cage. It reached for her, and she suddenly turned violet and ghostly, its hands passing right through her with no more effect than her knives had had on it.
The boy continued to back away while raising a diamond-shaped shield to block the female zombie. But by this time, he had been maneuvered into position. A skeletal hand burst forth from the dirt of the vegetable patch and grabbed his ankle tightly. He let out a little scream and tried to shake the hand off, but Liliana reinforced its power and strength, essentially staking the man-child in place. As the hand’s grip tightened, the shield holding back the undead female began to shimmer and waver.
In front of Liliana, the woman with the knives solidified and kicked out, snapping the shin of her attacker, who dropped to one knee but kept advancing, dragging the broken leg behind it. But the woman simply circled wide around the creature, racing back toward the hemisphere and Liliana.
“Teyo, get ready!”
Liliana knew she’d have to time this perfectly. If she brought up her magic too soon, the besieged boy wouldn’t drop his. She’d have to be prepared for the dome of light to fall—and then strike quickly, before the woman could strike first.
The woman said, “Now!”
Liliana rapidly brought up another dark cloud.
But the boy hadn’t dropped the shield. It had been a feint, a trick to lure her out. Although if it had, it seemed to have fooled the woman, as well. For even as Liliana’s dark mist again crashed uselessly against the inner wall of the hemisphere, the woman was already turning to the boy, saying “Teyo, I said ‘Now!’ ”
The female zombie broke through the boy’s failing diamond-shaped shield. It was all but upon him, and yet he still maintained the hemisphere around Liliana. Only when the mist dispersed—when neither Liliana nor the woman was quite at the ready—did the boy Teyo drop his shield.
Caught off guard, both women belatedly tried to renew their attacks, but before her opponent could bring her spectral knives to bear and before Liliana could bring up more spectral energy of her own—something struck Liliana from behind, sending her into darkness…