To Eladamri's other side stood another woman. As weary as her comrades, she did not drop down. A war woman, she kept her weapon-a chain and blade construct called a toten-vec-ready in the pulsing air. Her eyes and hair were dark, her face intense, her frame a taut coalition of muscle and bone. She, too, was an orphan raised in Rath. Wicked parents make monsters of some and heroes of others. This one was a hero, Liin Sivi by name. She would guard her companions to the death.
Gaea, these are not perfect folk. These are heroes, true, but not divinities. This Eladamri is no more pure than a Kavu, parented by leaf and flame in equal measure. This Takara is embittered by long imprisonment. This Liin Sivi-chains and blades are myriad already in Dominaria. What makes these three divine?
He knew he was to keep silent and still and sense them.
Up from Verdura they marched. They sought forest- Llanowar. Travelers' tales told of them. In every village they entered, folk asked them where they had been, how they had come to Verdura. Eladamri told their story, simple and certain. He warned of the hellish kingdom to come, of demons pouring down out of storm clouds, and of cataclysm tearing Dominaria apart. At first, he seemed but a brain-baked fool, wandering in dust with two other lunatics.
Then reports came of demons raining from the clouds over Benalia and Yavimaya, over Zhalfir and Shiv and Keld.
Villagers flocked to Eladamri. If this man had known of the coming monsters, surely he would know how to fight them. Eladamri did know. He told them what to do, how to make arrows that would pierce carapace skulls, how to mix glistening-oil poisons, how to stab all the hearts of a vampire hound. The people listened to every word. When he said he could not linger on the road to Llanowar, they heard that he had a messianic mission there. They followed him. They preceded him. Runners went ahead to the forest kingdoms, telling the glories of the elf who was coming, who had raised an army on the road and who would fight the monsters that came to destroy Llanowar.
Fhedusil, King of Staprion, sent Steel Leaf warriors to intercept this man and his army. Savage-shorn and tattooed, elves crouched at the forest eaves. Past Freyalisean eye-patches, archers watched the man approach.
Eladamri strode sternly. Sweat glinted on his brow. Eyes sparked beneath. Takara lingered at his right hand, allowing petitioners one by one to approach the man. Liin Sivi lingered at his left, keeping back the rest of the crowd.
The Steel Leaf elves emerged from the forest to bar the way. They were immediately surrounded by the believing throng. That is enough to sway most men, but these were elves. In the name of King Fhedusil, they demanded that
Eladamri halt his human army and turn them back to Verdura. His followers took great exception.
Eladamri himself did not. He said only this: "May you survive the coming plague." He turned to go.
The Steel Leaf did not allow it. They demanded in the name of the Staprion Elfhame that Eladamri accompany them to see King Fhedusil but that he turn back his human army. Again, Eladamri's followers took exception.
Again, Eladamri did not. He told his followers, "Go to defend your homes. I have an army of my own awaiting here." He gestured into the trees, where Steel Leaf warriors crowded in their multitude, peering through their stylized goggles.
Just now, Multani's senses traveled in the midst of the elf throng. They strode among colonnades of stately trees. They ascended spiral stairways that wound around trunks. Overhead, just beneath proud crowns of green, spread villages and cities of wood, with conic towers and widecurving plazas, lookout posts and cozy huts. At their center stood the exalted palace of the Staprion Chief.
I must go too, Gaea. I must see this savior of the elves.
Moving across the world was more difficult than moving through Yavimaya. At every edge of the forest, an ocean covered the land.
Multani leaped above the sparkling waves, riding on currents of pollen. The rarefied life of those tiny spores could barely hold him. It was a long leap to the nearest landfall.
Below appeared a great jungle of kelp. Multani swept down out of the pollen, skipping across the plants. Their leaves crowded atop the waves, ten miles of salty respite before he surged again into pollens on the trade winds.
Land appeared ahead, a black line too still to be water. Where there was land, there was green. In a mere thought, Multani reached it. He plunging into cliff-top woodlands as a child into a pile of leaves.
This was not Llanowar. These woods were but scrub on the edge of fanned fields, windbreaks and no more. Still, Llanowar was not far. A patchwork of hickory and sumac led across the undulating fields. Multani leaped through them. He moved with the quick surging motion of water. Beyond were redbud and alder, which led in turn to juniper and fir. Llanowar loomed on the horizon. Multani was there in a moment.
He breathed again. To be among these great trees-this root tangle and colonnade and crown-it was almost like his own Yavimaya. Magnigoth was replaced by quosumic, Gaea by Freyalise, the volcanic Mori Tumulus by the Dreaming Caves, but otherwise, this might have been Yavimaya.
Except that Llanowar had a spirit of its own. Reserved, refined, reticent, the soul of Llanowar stared at Multani through the leaves.
Forgive me this intrusion, honored Molimo- Why come you here, Multani of Yavimaya? – came a thought that was as much accusation as question.
Circling through the bark of one great forest giant, Multani could sense the angry heat in the heartwood. I come to see this man, this Eladamri.
As with all outsiders, he is nothing, came the reply.
He is nothing, but Gaea makes something of him, said Multani. I come at her bidding. It was only a slight exaggeration.
At the name of Gaea, a troubled rumble came to the great mind of Molimo. Freyalise rules Llanowar, not Gaea
– Gaea rules all Dominaria, even if your elves do not know it, Multani replied. Freyalise is no goddess. She is but a planes
– Be quick, then, Multani! See what you must. Do what you must, and leave.
Yes, Molimo. As you bid.
Smiling inwardly, Multani continued on his way. Molimo would suffer his presence now because he had no other choice. He would suffer it later when fiends started falling from the sky.
In the time it had taken Multani to skip across the ocean, Eladamri and his entourage had nearly reached the treetops. There was no missing the path he had taken. Every fox shied from the trail of the throng; every coney poked its wondering head out at them. Eladamri marched forward in the company of Steel Leaf warriors and their sleek, shouldering hounds.
Even now, they ascended to the palace of King Fhedusil.
Multani coiled up through vast vines, some as fat as trees elsewhere. He surged to the high court of the Staprion Elfhame.
It was a glorious palace of white wood, grown through complex magics out of the crown of a quosumic tree. The tree's boughs spread wide, an enormous hand holding aloft the palace. Foliage rioted across woodland murals and up tall towers with roofs of living thatch. Green pennants snapped among the leaves. Wide courtyards, hanging gardens, blooming bowers-it was a beautiful court in the treetops. Yavimaya had no such magically constructed halls. An elf from Multani's homeland might have thought it all pretentious, though today it seemed only wonderful.
Multani seeped out into the quosumic's leaves and saw it all.