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(Based on a real encounter my partner had when she got back into Magic with Return to Ravnica. Her opponent did not understand how regeneration was not countering Supreme Verdict and was outraged to the point of trying to flip the table. I am trying to channel some of that animosity here...)
"I cast Narrative Vandalism. It cannot be countered and, when it resolves, I will have retconned years-worth of character development! Chandra and Nissa will have only ever had a platonic relationship, while Chandra has harbored a crush for Gideon all this time. Further Vraska will heel turn and be straight-up silver-age levels of evil again, and Jace will once more be enamored with Liliana instead as is proper since Jace is the planeswalker our target player base identifies with and Liliana is the smoking hot bad girl that they want to date."
"Okay, sure, that hits the stack. In response, I tap for red, black, and green to cast Jund is Bisexual which puts the story *I* want to tell on top."
"Why bother? You can't counter my vandalism. It's going to happen. My plans for your favorite planeswalkers cannot be stopped!"
"Right, I can't counter it, but that doesn't mean I can't shield them from harm. With the protection of Vorthos, your spell will affect nothing."
"No, that's... You can't do that! Those characters *belong to me*. I have the final say over how they will be portrayed!"
"No, you clod, own their names and likenesses. Who they are, what they stand for, and what their stories mean are things which can't be owned—and every word of this story will be proof of that..."
It has been two weeks since Bolas' defeat and the pryomantic planeswalker Chandra Nalaar still finds herself overwhelmed like never before and unable to summon the full power of her flames. For the first time since learning to make little fireballs on her fingertips, the fire does not come when she calls for it. Nothing in all of her travels and trials has quenched her like this. With molten fury, burning passion, and a sense of purpose as keen as the steel forged at Kheral Keep, she has endured more pain and heartache than any one person should have to experience. So long as she could get back on her feet, there was never a reason to doubt that things would work out.
Now though, she feels quenched like never before. Empathically wounded by the utter devastation wreaked by the Elderspell, aggrieved by their victory's toll, and beside herself with grief, the embers of her, heretofore irrepressible, spirit are scattered everywhere, too spread out to ignite the plane's still-disrupted mana. Unable to walk away from the aftermath of Bolas' assault on Ravnica, emotions she has always left behind now chain her in place. Being stuck forces her to face the reality she is here not because she survived, but because she happened to be one of the lucky ones. After anything else, that would have been the spark she needed. She would have found the hope to keep burning in the face of adversity because tomorrow promised something new.
The only sure thing has been Nissa. Thinking about it now, Chandra feels sheepish after making the first move to advance their relationship, much to her chagrin, but the moment had been too perfect to pass up. Her heart had lept when she caught the animist's glowing eyes from across a plaza. The feeling of Nissa in her arms was the last crack in her emotional armor. Lost in the celebrating crowd, they were, in effect, alone for the first time since reuniting and she poured everything she had left into confessing her affection, adoration, and respect to the woman who had come to mean so much to her. Nissa had not replied, but the kiss they had shared was the last time Chandra felt like herself.
However, as nice as sharing a bed can be, those moments of repose are not helping her heal as quickly as she wants. She hates feeling vulnerable. She hates feeling like a burden on Nissa. Saheeli is willing to bring her back to Kaladesh, but Chandra is in no shape to reunite with her mother. Desperate to find her fire again, she intends to return to Regatha with Master Jaya and take up the mantle of head abbot once more. It is there, she believes, she can find the strength to recover and be ready to face the next, inevitable, threat.
Still valuing Zendikar's recovery over anywhere else, Nissa is itching to return to her home plane. Not wanting to be separated after Chandra's confession, however, Nissa compels the pyromancer to join her on Zendikar instead. The animist insists the plane's abundance of mana, and helping the people of Zendikar rebuild, will allow Chandra to recharge on her own terms. As altruistic as her suggestion is, the elvish heroine also wants to keep the pyromancer close after Chandra's enthusiastic declaration of love. Nissa is struggling to find the words to convey the depths of her affection, but, truth is, Chandra is never far from her mind. It always feels like that passionate heat is on the back of her neck or at the edge of her ears—a feeling which started when she melded their leyline empowered energies to destroy Ulamog and Kozilek and has only gotten stronger the more they fight alongside each other. It was not until after returning to Zendikar from Dominaria—disgusted at how Liliana had used them and would do so again—that she noticed Chandra's energies were also circulating through the leylines of the plane. Apparently, the Worldwaker was so into the Pyromaster that her feelings were affecting the plane itself.
Meanwhile, at Vess Manor on Dominaria, Liliana has been shaken to her core by Gideon's sacrifice to save her from the curse's final toll. She has told herself, over and over again, until it was a part of her, that she needed no one, and yet, Jace had ensured her escape. For the first time since leaving Innistrad lifetimes ago, she is unsure what to do. She is free of the contract now, free to do as she pleases, but she also knows that the others who saw her leading the Dreadhorde will not let her live without a fight.
As she wrestles with the spirits living in the chain veil, which is inciting her to strike first against her new foes, a ghostly figure in white appears before her for a moment, although it fades away without speaking. It does, however, leave behind a golden coin embossed with crossed olive branches.
Back on Ravnica, a conversation with Nahiri has gone in a fascinating direction for Nissa. The Kor wants nothing more than for Zendikar to be healed and finally free of being a prison, but also cannot bring herself to return home. However, with Ugin gone, no one else knows how the hedron network functions. The heiromancer suggests that Jace copy her memories and transplant them into Nissa. The elf and the mind mage agree this might be the best course of action. Equipped with the knowledge of the lithomancer, Nissa returns home with Chandra and Jaya in tow.
Upon her return, Nahiri's knowledge of the crafted network and Nissa's intuitive understanding of the natural leylines come together in her mind. Like when she challenged Kefnet's trial, Nissa finds herself at the edge of a whirlpool that hungers to learn, to consume, and to grow. She resists the pull towards blue but is left drained for the next few days. When she awakens next, Nissa knows the hedron network as well as the lithomancer who created them—no, better than that. Able to use blue mana, she can combine artifice and life energy, and can tap into the network at will. Quite by accident, she discovers this new ability means she can submerge herself in the leylines and be anywhere on Zendikar in a moment's notice.
However, the memories which are the key to all of this bring Nahiri's zeal with them, and the more Nissa draws on the network to support her, the more her drive to restore her world grows. It is not long before Nissa can barely rest while she moves from continent to continent to finish off remnants of the Eldrazi menace and assist the world in recovering. With the network focusing empowered mana into her, and the soul of Zendikar's blessing, Nissa can perform veritable miracles. A single word and a sweep of her staff causes new trees to grow in Bala Ged—the first since all of this began. Just as with the Eldrazi titans, the world begins to change as she walks upon it. Where there was salt-like decay, new life blooms. Where there was bismuth corruption, new life emerges. Working in concert with Kiora and biomancers on Ravnica, the oceans are coming back to life.
Meanwhile, despite getting to fight and sleep shoulder to shoulder with someone whose inner fire matches her own, Chandra's conflicts are not going away—if anything Nissa's newfound power only sharpens them. Even as she continues to train under Jaya's tutelage, the pyromancer cannot stop thinking about how her power has come up short over and over. Regret is another emotion Chandra is not used to dealing with. Although her roiling emotions left her powerless on Ravnica, when faced with something she can punch, her frustration, her grief, and her doubts empower her flames like never before. She soon falls back into bad habits of coping with her feelings by throwing herself at battles with the swarm's remnants where the odds are stacked against her. Although she is never alone long, Zendikar's—and therefore Nissa's—energy is eager to merge with her will and flames. The elementals which emerge from using her pyromancy like this remind her of the Aetherborn and her home.
Thinking of home reminds her of Liliana. Had the necromancer already been working for Bolas when she encouraged Chandra to face Baral? Had her goal been to help Tezzeret all along? Had those moments of connection between them just been pieces of an intricate lie? Probably. She had been a fool to think Liliana cared about anything beyond her own interest. All of that honeyed affection, all of that supposed empathy, all of those nights together—to the last, they had been tools to manipulate her. Had she not seen Josu with her own eyes on Dominara, she would have discounted Liliana's moment of emotional vulnerability as gremlin's tears. Still, it is hard to shake the sincerity in the necromancer's eyes as she told Chandra about her past.
It is then, in that moment of hesitation, that Tibalt finds her. The half-devil from Innistrad knows exactly what to say to get under her skin. He picks a fight with Jaya and his taunting soon provokes Chandra into pursuing him. After returning Jaya to Regatha, she arrives on Amonket, a place that might never recover from what Bolas has done to it. Enraged, she wrecks endless effigies of Bolas until her hair drops to her shoulders and her flames refuse to come because she is so exhausted. Samut finds her soon after, weeping like a lost child.
Back on Zendikar, Tibalt takes advantage of Nissa's corrupted mental state and Chandra's sudden disappearance to drive a wedge between the budding couple. He believes this ensures that Chandra will be alone when he finally commits to killing her. Torn between Zendikar's recovery and chasing after Chandra, Nissa's heart picks Zendikar's wellbeing and she doubles down on her efforts hoping to find a point where she is satisfied as soon as possible so that she can let go of her obsession.
Recovering under the care of Hazoret's followers, Chandra undergoes The Fervent's trial in another attempt to rediscover herself. There she encounters a ghostly figure in white. In her distressed state, she thinks it is a vision of Gideon until she glimpses a golden mask of a woman's face beneath the hood. The specter fights her, wielding spears made of light and shadow. Chandra is almost killed but saved by Liliana. The necromancer is even more intractable than before. She seems to be there as a friend, but soon planeswalks away in disgust after Chandra attacks her in a fit of rage.
"I had hoped you would be more amicable," Liliana taunts. "But it seems my faith in your resilence was misplaced. If you ever get over having turned feral, come find me. I'm going to Theros."
Days later, in a ruined town well on its way to recovery, Nissa encounters the same cloaked figure that has visited Liliana and Chandra. A brief scuffle ends with Nissa on her knees before the phantom. A finger on her forehead, followed by a whisper, turns Nahiri's memories to ash. Then, the woman in battered armor whispers one word before fading away: Theros.
Although divided by space, time, and personal demons, it would seem the three planeswalkers' fates are still interwoven. Who is the ghostly woman and what does she want from them? Is she working with Tibalt? Kaya? Or is she a new player? One thing is for sure, everything leads to Theros...