Duel Decks: Heiress vs Usurper

Arina appeared in the snow, where she knew she would be within ten minutes of Shaidosta proper. Its tall quartz buildings stood in the night, although instead of being illuminated by the lights of the people within it, the city was as dark as the night sky, lit only by starlight and the snow that reflected it. Arina could feel the presence of guards in the watchtowers; a surprise to no one, naturally, but especially not to her.

Karina planeswalked behind her. This was no place for a child, even a trained one. This was no place for someone who lacked proper stealth training, who could alert guards to her existence at any moment. To someone who would only accomplish being captured, possibly killed, when Arina could do this job herself.

“We are multiple days ahead of Sylvares. I would prefer to engage her within the city.” Arina was already starting to move towards the city, gliding across the snow in a way that Karina had never seen from her before. Her stride was clean, without wasted movements, as she made her way to the stone wall and stayed safely out of the way of the watchtowers’ vision. Karina followed suit, doing her best to copy the spell Arina was using.

Arina slowed, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, letting the aether and energy in the world present itself to her. There was no powerful magic here, nothing stronger than the rapier at her waist. The guards were probably not magical, though she couldn’t be certain unless she felt a stronger flux of energy. As she edged closer, she carefully prepared to cast a spell.

As Karina tried to come to a stop, she slipped on the snow and fell to the ground, letting out a softened thump. Despite the snow, the noise was still loud enough to make it to the guards.

“Who’s that?” A male guard shouted down. He seemed like he must have been old enough to have grandchildren. Arina took a deep breath and created two sharp darts of ice. She pushed against the wall into the clear space in front of the towers. They could see her, but only for a moment. In a single arc of her arm, both of her darts had pierced vital parts of the guards, and they collapsed to the floor. Out of the corner of Arina’s eye, she noticed Karina wince, but neither of them said anything.

Arina looked into the open space between the two towers and motioned to it. “Into the city. Carefully, and quietly.” Arina knew where to find the resistance. Few people in Shaidosta knew as much as she did about the underground. Fewer outside of Shaidosta even knew it existed.

Within the walls, the city was collapsed. Large apartment complexes that were shattered from attempted coups against Sylvares. City lights were destroyed, street shops were ravaged. Very few people were in the streets, and those that were moved quickly, avoiding attracting the attention of the enforcers. The merchants that would come and go when she was a child were no longer there.

Arina carefully walked down narrow alleys and side roads that Shaidostan enforcers never traveled as part of their routes, wiping their footprints away once they reached a particularly confusing intersection. The sounds of enforcers moving could be heard all around as more and more of them learned that the gate guards had been killed, and Arina had no interest in being caught.



Finally, after what Arina noticed was about ten minutes and what Karina felt like was much longer, she reached a door of importance, one labeled faintly with the emblems of the ten factions, arranged on the points of a ten-pointed star. “That symbol used to be used by a network of thieves across the entire plane,” Arina whispered to the young girl. “Though, that network fell apart shortly before I fled Shaidosta. They took it from the alliance of factions in Ancient Volaria, where it stood for the unity of the factions and the duties of their masters. Now, the Rebellion uses it as a symbol against Sylvares, who stands against everything that the First Masters, my ancestors, stood for.” Arina could not help instruct Karina about her history.

Arina lightly and rhythmically tapped on the door. This door likely lead into an apartment complex, where Rebellion members would stay out of the sights of Shaidostan enforcers. A soft whisper came from the other side of the door. “Who’s that?”

“Nisita.” Arina’s response was quick and sharp.

“Don’t believe you. What’ve you got?”Arina’s only response was a whistle, of three specific notes.  The whisper replied a moment later. “What business you got here?”

“I am looking for allies in an attempt to strike down Sylvares.”

“Enter.” The door opened slowly, and to one side of it, a white-haired elf stared at her, waiting for her and the child to listen to his instructions. Arina could feel his magic. Like her, he must have used it a lot.



The interior hallway was covered in a black carpet, leading into wood-supported quartz walls. Occasional spheres of magical light were stuck to the walls. The built-in electrical lights were off. Doors stood on either side, presumably leading into various residences. The place they would be lead, as the elf was definitely leading them to, would be in the highest remaining floor of the complex. With how collapsed the buildings were in the city, that could be only a few storeys, or many of them.

The elf lead the two into an elevator. Arina looked at it for a few seconds, wondering how it still worked when there was no electricity here. She did not know enough about electricity or its use to guess.

As the elevator rose, Karina looked up at Arina. “Why are we waiting? Why don’t we meet them on the road?”

“Because I do not wish to die.” Karina seemed confused at Arina’s response. Arina looked down to Karina. “We would be at a heavy disadvantage attempting to engage her. The journey from Entela to Shaidosta is very safe. Exiting Mirora, there is a forest that can serve as cover, and climbing the mountain path leaves more strategic positions for being lower on the mountain. The snowfield we arrived in tends to have less visibility, which benefits the person with more assassins.”

Karina looked down. “Okay, if the city is safer then… I just want her to be okay.”

“This is our best opportunity for that.” Arina took a moment to consider her next words. “I want Sylvares to be separate from Hannah before I engage her. However we make that happen.”

The elevator opened about halfway up a normal-sized complex into a large well-furnished room, with a walkway parting two lowered areas that had tables and chairs, leading from the elevator to a main section. The walls of the room and the lowered sections were made of quartz, and the floor was carpeted in blue. Polished dark wooden railings blocked off the lowered areas from the walkway, except for a carpet staircase in each stemming from the main room. Various aetheric displays, ones that looked like Entelan design, were set up on consoles, with a person manning each one.

“Teri,” the elf called out. That name seemed familiar, as did the person that turned around when he spoke, but Arina could not pin down why. She looked almost Litaran in the way she was dressed and carried herself. A bright white and blue dress with longer sleeves for the colder weather. She did not look natively like a Shaidostan. “This is—”

“Arina Nisita,” the woman cut him off. “I thought you died ages ago.”

“I thought I died as well.” Arina locked eyes with the woman. “You seem to recognize me. Why?”

“I met you in Litara a month or so before Oscura attacked you. While you were looking for info.”

Arina’s eyebrows raised. “Oh? If that is the case, then the information you gave me saved Volaria. I hope you are proud of yourself.” The woman smirked as Arina closed the distance between the two. “This is quite the operation you have. If I did not know I came through Shaidosta, I would have attributed this to another world, or maybe possibly Entela.”

“Expensive, but virtually untraceable without several years of studying aetherics,” Teri replied proudly. “We’ve got a pretty large collection of friends who’re more than willing to die if it’ll lead to Shaidosta’s reclamation. Not all of them are originally Shaidostan.” Teri lightly slid her sleeve on her left arm up to show a transceiver, similar to the one Arina was wearing.

“So I assume you aren’t here for no reason,” Teri continued. “Why now?”

“Sylvares is returning from Entela with possession of my daughter. We were able to get here faster and hope to engage her once they are separated.” Arina quickly did some math in her head. “They should be here in the morning two days from now.”

Arina and Teri watched Karina set a device down on a table. Where did it come from? Teri shrugged and continued. “We can set up for that, then.”

is it intentional that the evanescier has no race types

Karina held Hannah tightly as the detonator discharged, blasting a hole through the wall into the outside world. Doing what she could, she pulled Hannah through the hole, letting her breaths help her.

“I didn’t know those work in anti-spell fields,” Hannah thought while her voice wouldn’t work. She took many deep breaths, and Karina could notice the change from her slow weakened movements to the attentive flickering of her eyes. Hannah coughed when she tried to speak, but kept trying.

“Are you okay?” Karina asked. Hannah nodded, hearing the approach of the guards inside the prison.

“Yeah,” she said, jumping to her feet. “Just… needed a bit of time to get my energy back. Come on, we’ve gotta find Mom.”

“Uh… close your eyes for a moment.” Karina grabbed a breath, focused and drew a glass sphere of light into her hands. The guards came into view inside the cell, weapons drawn. Karina clenched her eyes and shattered the sphere, feeling the warmth of its light released into the air.

The guards screeched, yelling, “Can’t see! What happened?” Karina took Hannah’s hand and pulled her along as they ran off in search of her mother.

---

Arina closed her eyes and breathed deeply, feeling the flow of elemental energy around her. Large clouds of energy generated and dissipated at the sites of combat, all around Arina at various points in the city. She stood nearly in the center of the city, with no sense of direction where she should be headed. Anyone that would have been here had since left or hidden.

There were no footsteps but her own. The snow crunched beneath her feet, illuminated by the flying spells overhead but otherwise completely dark. Arina did not feel alone. She knew these streets well, and knew every place that an assassin, particularly one as skilled as Sylvares, could be hiding in wait. That was what she was counting on.

The empty streets were never reassuring. As a child, it meant people were avoiding her. As an adult, it now meant that anyone could be anywhere. A spell was ready in her hands, and she could grab her rapier, Mindmelder, at any time. All she needed was to find her target in the vast expanse.

“Good.” Sylvares’s voice echoed around off the walls of the street, rendering her position impossible to discern. “I was worried you might have left your daughter somewhere that she might be getting hurt. But, if you’re here, that means you must’ve freed your daughter first, right?” Arina clenched the fist that held her spell. Where was she?

“You wished for me to come here,” Arina called out. “Show yourself so I can kill you.”

Sylvares appeared in front of Arina in as grand an entrance as she could manage. Wind gathered itself in a cyclone, and a bright flash of light heralded Sylvares’s appearance. She had aged significantly since Arina last saw her. Her dark hair was braided behind her, and she had a cruel grin on her face. Her cloak had a golden trim along its edges, indicative of the Master of Shaidosta. “Imagine, if you never left to Entela, maybe you could’ve prevented all this. Maybe I would’ve let you take over as Master, and we’d never have gotten here.”


Arina let her spell go, shooting a thin ice crystal towards Sylvares. She deftly ducked underneath it and kept looking at Arina, her smile growing as she spoke. “But here we are. I have the power now, and those that can’t keep power have no business having it in the first place. You will die, your daughter will die, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Arina cursed. “If you have hurt my daughter—” Sylvares began to disappear, and Arina noticed the flow of her cloak, indicating which direction she was about to go. Arina thrust another ice shard in that direction, and threw another one further. Neither of them managed to connect.

Sylvares jumped out from a shadow with a dagger drawn. Arina reached a spell to draw Mindmelder and parry Sylvares’s attack. The Master tumbled onto the ground and rolled to her feet. “What was that? Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” she taunted as she jumped again.

Arina gripped her blade tighter, and darkness coated the blade. She could feel the energy inside her, and it wanted out. She would happily let it out. “Severi aritae.” Arina forcefully cut in front of her in Sylvares’s general direction, releasing a shadow through the air. Sylvares only smiled and jumped aside, leaving a cloud of mist in her wake, watching the shadow harmlessly dissipate into the side of a shop.


“Ooh, that was a bold move there, Nisita.” Sylvares put her hand on her chin and tilted her head with a smile. “How will you fight me without your power script? Do you really think you can save your daughter that way?”

“This is for Shaidosta’s reclamation, too,” Arina spat. “We were friends. We agreed to work for Shaidosta’s betterment. Is that what you call this?”

“We sure were,” Sylvares agreed. “Then one of us decided she no longer wanted to be Shaidostan. Well, someone had to take over after Icilica bit the dust, and you sure weren’t going to.” Arina rushed up to Sylvares. Her strike deflected off Sylvares’s dagger, and she ducked out of the way of Sylvares’s next attack.

Arina gritted her teeth. “If you will not surrender, you will die.”

Sylvares smiled. “Bring it on, then.” Sylvares ran up to Arina, and Arina glided along the snow to get out of the way. Arina gathered a spell and used it to push Sylvares off her feet. As she slid up to strike, Sylvares caught Arina’s rapier with her dagger.

Arina flicked her hand, and four of her ice shards generated around her, floating slightly above her. She slid back and to Sylvares’s side and threw two of them, both of which were perfectly dodged. Sylvares ran towards her, and Arina glided backwards, pushing the other two shards into Sylvares. As Sylvares ducked aside, she ran up and closed the distance.

Sylvares slashed upwards against Arina. When Arina blocked the dagger with her rapier, Sylvares twisted her grip and sent Mindmelder out of Arina’s hand. The dagger came back down, slashing Arina’s upper arm and chest. Arina collapsed, the searing pain in her chest spreading blood out to the snow.

Hannah and Karina ran, hearing the shouts of the Shaidostan Master. She was this way. Hannah knew where she was. She felt like she could tell where everything in the city was, even though she knew that wasn’t true. This was the only certainty she had.

The two girls arrived to see Hannah’s mother collapsing to the ground. Hannah’s eyes caught Arina’s for just a moment, and gasped and started to run behind the Master. Sylvares dropped her dagger and walked calmly over to the rapier, picking it up and standing over Arina with a grin on her face.

“Your lineage is over, Arina,” the Master declared. “Shaidosta belongs to me.”


Time seemed to slow for Hannah as she ran. As her mom fell, it felt like she fell in slow-motion.  Or, more accurately, didn't fall.  Karina kept close to her.


Hannah felt the spell inside her as she channeled it instinctively. She hated these spells. These spells were only used for killing others. But maybe, just maybe, she could use her power scripts for good. Maybe, sometimes, people deserved to die.

“Areto soveri!” Hannah shouted, louder than any words she had ever said before. Sylvares’s eyes widened, and then she stopped moving. She stopped speaking. She stopped breathing. Not even her robe flapped in the wind. Nothing moved.


Hannah desperately grabbed the dagger from the ground and plunged it into Sylvares’s chest. Tears formed in her eyes as she withdrew the dagger and did it again, just to make sure. She fell to the ground beside her mother. She rolled Arina over, and Arina looked up into her eyes.

“Mom?” Hannah asked, her voice shaking. Arina smiled. She could feel enough to channel magic in her hand, just once more before she would be too exhausted to do so. And she had one more spell she had to cast, so that Shaidosta could be free from the fighting. She lifted her arm, pointed her hand into the sky past Hannah, and released a jet of blue light that released a thunderous rumble as it flew up. When the light was high enough in the air, it detonated with a loud enough sound and a bright enough flash that people on the other side of the world could see it.

Karina fell to Hannah’s side. “I can stop the bleeding, but that’s about it.” Hannah nodded desperately. This feeling seemed strangely familiar to Hannah. She had felt this type of urgency before. Before she knew what was actually happening, Karina was helping Arina drink one of the yellow healing vials.

Hannah did know that the vial wouldn’t save her without help. “Mom…” She breathed in sharply and shouted at the top of her lungs, “HELP!”

---

As the blue flare lit up the sky, the fighting around Teri ceased. The last voice quieted when its detonation sounded off. The last sound of aethersteel against aethersteel was snuffed out by the snow. That flare meant only one thing: the war was over. Teri and the nearby evanescier looked at each other. The shadow on the evanescier’s face vanished, and they locked eyes. The evanescier motioned for Teri to join her, and Teri agreed, lightly gliding from the top of her building to the snowy ground.

“Was that yours or ours?” the evanescier questioned. “Do you have a way to confirm? Both of them are Shaiostan.”

“I…” Teri paused. She paused briefly. Of course, Arina was from here too, wasn’t she? Teri lifted her transceiver to her chest. “I do. Contact Rebellion.”

As the call connected to the other leaders, the only sound that could be heard were the frantic screams of “help” and sobbing. “Arina, Arina,” Teri called. The screams stopped, and shaky breathing replaced it.

“Hannah… Mom’s injured, she needs help,” a voice replied, wavering.

“Can you confirm whose flare that was?”

“M-mom’s. Master Sylvares is dead. I— I killed her...”

Teri looked up to the evanescier. “Kera, you were the closest. Get medics over there, now.”

“Kera is dead,” came a different voice. “We’ll do what we can.”

“The war is over,” Teri said with a deep breath. “Shaidosta will recover. But it’s going to take time.”

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Epilogue tomorrow alongside the full set file and decklists!