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In all the expanse of infinity, that great sweeping span of the multiverse, with millions and millions of possibilities to travel to, Kaya had managed to find the one plane composed entirely of mud.
A meager sound of disgust sputtered from Kaya’s mouth as she stepped off the cobble into yet another puddle of ankle-deep grime. Goodie. One more pair of boots ruined—third fucking one this week. She grumbled as she shlorped out of the greedy suction, inattentively picking at the edges of her gloves by habit alone. These, thankfully, had suffered less from this horrid plane, though not by much. Whatever. It was almost over. She was in sight of her contract, and with a few calculated stabs, she could leave this place and never come back.
Trailing a brown stain across the already filthy street, Kaya stopped in front of the innocuous thatched house and took a breath. Her eyes skipped to the open window on the second floor—a skill vestigial from the days when she still needed to care about walls— and took a readying breath.
She dipped in.
All walls feel different. She knows they shouldn’t, not when there’s not enough of her there to feel them, but they do. White plaster walls feel weak and scratchy, wood crossbeams leave spectral splinters inside her long after she’s corporealized her form, and these slopped together hay mixtures were no less a discomfort than anything else she’d had to deal with on the hunt for one murderous necromancer. Kaya dodged lightly between each area, navigating the layout, slowly spiraling away from the street, until she reached a room that was dry with pale light filtering feebly in through a lone window onto a grew wooden floor and there-
Was Liliana Vess.
She was sprawled on what could generously be described as a couch, hair grown long and limp fanning on the back behind her. She raised her head as Kaya appeared on the braided rug.
“Hm.” Liliana raised here eyebrows, so high they were nearly perfect-half circles. “About time. Tell me, what do you think of this?” She held something out in Kaya’s direction.
“Liliana Vess, the Living Guildpact has called for your head.” Usually Kaya didn’t announce her employer with such brazenness, but these were special circumstances. “You are charged with treason and the deaths of millions on Ravnica. This is already better than you deserve.”
“Yes I know.” Liliana with withdrew her hand. “Though could it wait a moment? I’ve almost cracked it.”
It was then Kaya was drawn to the item Liliana was holding. The egg was metallic—some sort of artifact no doubt—but as her eyes fell on the deep grooves scratched into its surface, the familiar visage of a now-shattered statue the Izzet had been cleaning up for days materialized in her vision.
“Is that…?”
“Yes.” Liliana absently waved a hand. “As I said, I’m almost done. Perhaps you could come back tomorrow?”
“Tomor-” Kaya raised her blades from where she’d let them fall at her side. “Vess, I am going to kill you.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” Liliana raised the egg to her face, tilting it each way to reflect the cloud-cover light. “All I ask is a day. I am sure to have unlocked it by then.”
Kaya narrowed her eyes. “And what’s to stop you from Walking away if I do?”
“If I wanted to Walk, I would have done so in the week you’ve been snooping around,” Liliana said idly, not giving Kaya so much as a glance.
Kaya opened her mouth, only to snap it shut again. Had she really been that obvious? A year of being guildmaster must have made her lose her touch. And if Liliana really had seen her, why hadn’t she left? It could it be as she said, that she simply didn’t care?
Attacking now would be the stupidest trap she’d ever fell into—but then again, she’d be the single worst assassin in the multiverse if she let a mark tell her ‘come back another day’. Kaya drew her left hand across her chest, but didn’t strike out, her teeth working a hole in the side of her cheek.
“And if I come back tomorrow?” she tested, watching Liliana’s every move, the recumbence in each limb.
There was a swish in the necromancer’s long fingers. “Then you do your business. Assuming I’ve gotten through mine.”
Kaya looked her over. She looked nothing like how Kaya had seen her from atop the citadel, where even at a distance of miles she had radiated power like a spirit of old. Her skin was now pale, dress threadbare—looking like it could be the same one she’d worn since the Spark War. Kaya pursed her lips.
“Fine,” she said as she dissipated her blades. She turned, leaving Liliana inert in her crypt. “See you tomorrow, Vess.”
Trap or no, she had a feeling she would. It seemed like her work was already half done.
This time, Kaya came in through the front door.
Liliana was where she’d left her, still toying with the legendary artifact and wearing no shoes.
“I thought you said you’d be done,” Kaya said, standing in front of her target and folding her arms.
“I did say that, yes.” Liliana’s long, uncut nails tapped monotonously on the shell.
Kaya waited, but the she volunteered no more. Eventually, the assassin sighed, and dragged a wooden chair across the floorboards until it was parallel to Liliana’s couch.
As she watched, Kaya reaffirmed her previous assessment. The tattoos along Liliana’s skin were pale and peeling, looking more like old scars than marks of her impressive power. Her collarbone was sharp against her chest, a harsh angle compared to the daring curve of her neck. Even in this small room with fading light, she was still the picture of elegance.
Liliana looked up suddenly, and Kaya swallowed, though she wasn’t sure why. But Liliana just said, “care to try?” and held out the artifact.
Kaya hesitated. This could be the exact trap she was worried about. But…she had no doubt this was the real deal, the dragon’s orb, (the one she wouldn’t know the first thing about cracking one she’d dealt with Liliana.) She had to admit she was curious—not only as to why Liliana would choose to spend her final days obsessing over discovering it’s secrets—but also what might happen if she did. She reached forward, brown leather grazing naked palm for the barest second, before it slipped into her grasp. One she was holding it, she still didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. But then, a notion struck her. One so crazy, it might just work.
Cautiously, she raised the egg above her head and held.
(Nothing happened.)
Liliana laughed, and it stung so sharply Kaya dropped her hand immediately. “Of course,” Liliana said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Kaya shoved it back toward her and glared.
“You’re the Orzhov guildmaster, are you not?” Liliana asked one day while practicing a spell along the egg’s surface.
Kaya rubbed her eyes, the picture of her knives hanging in her vision from where they lay on the floor. “Was.” She sighed, and stared at the collection of curved blades. “Got a promotion.”
“Hunting me to the filthiest plane in existence was a step up in your life?”
Kaya had taken to staying at Liliana’s place rather than trying to find another; it was just as bad as anywhere else. Plus, it meant she could keep on eye on her if she ever did try to escape.
“No. This is a side-gig.” Kaya huffed through her nose. “I happen to have a lot of options now.”
Liliana rolled her bare shoulders, the strap of her dress hanging limply down her arm, the hint of a humorless smile at her lips. “Of course.”
The woman, Kaya had come to learn, was addictively infuriating. Despite trying to hold her tongue, Kaya had once caught herself halfway through her brother’s sob story before realizing what Liliana was doing, too strung out on the intoxication of death hanging on a knife’s edge.
“We’re not friends,” she told her sharply, hoping to remind her where they were. “You killed thousands.”
“It was that or die,” Liliana said immediately, as though she’d practiced the excuse a dozen times.
“Yeah, and your friend ended up doing that for you.” Kaya wasn’t sure were the bitter words had come from, but now they were here. “Was it all worth it?”
Her lips were the only thing untouched by her long-growing isolation. They were heart-shaped, dark, slightly wet in perpetually moist air. She pursed them together so hard it left a dent.
“No.”
The word hung heavy in the room, open and festering. Kaya thought of the pyromancer, the one who’d stood at the edge of the ruined city and told Kaya everything she’d need to know to find her next mark. She’d never looked at Kaya once, just stared across the citadel as though she could set fire to it with her tear-streaked eyes alone. Kaya thought of Liliana, now and real, her throat moving with the swallow she most certainly hadn’t meant to show.
It seemed like the Hero of Ravnica had been quite the heartbreaker.
But Liliana was worse.
Her hands slid down Kaya’s bare hips, gliding forward until they brushed experimentally against her. Kaya moaned, helpless, unrestrained need as she tilted her head forward. Her lips brushed where Liliana’s throat met her clavicle, her breath leaving slack kisses against the dead tattoos. It was ill-advised, every way unethical, but Kaya still chased forward when Liliana finally put those slender fingers to use.
Liliana fucked like the world was ending. Like the last hours they would ever spend drawing breath were here and now—and for one of them, it just might be—and Kaya wanted nothing more than to unravel and phase right through the floor.
The thrusts inside her grew faster, and she bit down on Liliana’s shoulder, tasting blood or maybe that was just her own. Another hand was on her breast, cupping her stud and toying with it even as she was wracked to oblivion. The thundering inside became too loud, too overbearing, and she wailed, throwing back her head howling at the ceiling.
Liliana waited, the quirk of her lips just visible in the dark of the bedroom, and Kaya found herself glaring even as the fingers still moved lazily inside her.
The necromancer tilted her head. “Does that answer your question?”
Kaya stood up, knocking into Liliana in her haste, and got on her knees.
A pile of groceries thudded against the lightly used table, an apple rolling out the sack as it spilled out the side. Kaya ignored it, instead grabbing a hunk of bread and waltzing into Liliana’s room.
“Finally given up?” she asked around a mouth full of crumbs.
Liliana responded. Slower than Kaya had ever seen her do so, but responded. “No.” Her eyes were fixed on the opposite wall, the egg at her side on the deflated cushion. Achingly, her chin rotated, and she blinked at Kaya. “I was taking thinking upon something.” Then, “you don’t know what we were before.”
The bread in Kaya’s mouth was suddenly as dry as couch stuffing. She didn’t know what was going on in the Oldwalker’s mind, but she could guess.
Kaya shrugged, careful, nonchalant. “Guess not. You’re not going to enlighten me, are you?”
“I do not loathe you that much, no.” Although she stared, it seemed her eyes were looking past, as though she could see Kaya’s own death stretching out a shadow behind her. “We never are getting that back, are we?”
The natural inclination of maybe some day was stifled in Kaya’s chest. She walked behind Liliana, escaping the evil eye of her peripherals, and trailed a knuckle along her neck. A hair was grey where it hadn’t been before.
“…I don’t know,” she managed.
“I do.” Liliana was still entranced by the ghost Kaya had left. “Bolas tried. I tried. But when I looked at that city and that destruction…it took that to realize I cannot stop what comes. Not in any meaningful way.”
Kaya didn’t know what to say to that. She closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of Liliana’s hair.
When next she came, the Oldwalker was dead.
Her hand lay next to the artifact, bloodless and pale, delicately curled with her palm to the sky. Across the wooden rim of the cabriole, her neck lolled back, face jutting to the ceiling in one last look at what she’d never see again. She was perfect, statuesque. Maybe even sleeping, if not for the way her eyes shone empty.
“…Dammit.” Kaya had to squeeze her eyes tight, had to keep it inside, already a failure for the way her voice hung on the on word.
She stood in the room, cold light hitting her cheeks as she breathed in through the nose three four five, out through the mouth three four five. She did it until she could open her eyes again. The air was staler than it had ever been.
When she thought she could manage, she stared at Liliana, knowing she couldn’t mourn, knowing what the woman before her had done. Wishing she’d stopped all this from happening, had ended that first meeting the way she’d meant to. Way to go Kaya. You’ve gone and fucked it up again.
She landed on the egg, still locked and inert on the burlap cushion. Only a second’s hesitation, but then she stepped forward, taking her prize for the successful contract. Stolen from its owner, like Liliana from Bolas, like Bolas from whoever he’d snatched it from before him. She sighed, breath flowing off the grooves in its surface.
“Couldn’t even finish it, could you?” she demanded of the dead woman.
Liliana ignored her.
Kaya rubbed her eyes.
It was time to go. A truth that was solid because Kaya really wanted to go, to not stay in this home a moment longer. But her feet took her forward, behind the couch and over Liliana, to stare down at her upturned face.
Goodbye, she said but didn’t. She graced Liliana’s lips with her own, the faintest caress of contact, and melted from the room in a ripple of purple light.