She did not want to come back. She did not need to come back, but she had nonetheless. Jewel sat atop the hollow shell of one of Kelsan's few remaining buildings. The building had no remaining floors, and half of the masonry structure lay in a crumbled mess, dispersed among the remains of neighboring buildings. The place brought sadness to her. She had lost friends here. She had failed them, condemning them to their deaths. It was her responsibility to stop Trenton, but she failed, costing High Priest Jaredei, Pale Scale, Thad, Koan, Stinkfeet, Cuthbert and Aerelle their lives. Now she would never see any of them again. If she truly wanted to, she could have cried. There was nobody there too see her, and despite her power, the remnants of her mortal life still bubbled to the surface on occasion. Crying would have shown her humanity. Jewel didn't think she had any humanity left. She wanted to cry, but found she had no shoulder to cry on. She missed Aerelle.
She wanted to be away, as far away as he could. She had learned that planeswalkers could teleport and travel through a world in a blink of an eye. But she could not leave Roden, she discovered, because something blocked the way. Some mystical barrier. Roden, her birthplace was to be her prison.
There was not much left in Kelsan. She saw no one. Even the vultures had abandoned the forsaken city. Weeks after the razing of Kelsan, she had returned to pay respects to her one and only friends that had died in their quest. Trenton had been killed by his own general, but everyone who Jewel had traveled with had died also. She looked toward the center of the city, where the Nexus and Trenton's tower had once stood. Memories flashed through her mind, as distinct as they were when they had first happened.
Koan shifted into a huge ogre to expedite the door to the room. As he broke through the door, a resounding gong sounded and a blue glow came from the center of the chamber.Koan shifted into a panther and Pale Scale, Jewel and Jaredei charged through the broken entranceway. Pale Scale sent the entirety of his magic at Trenton, seated on a throne several spans away, while Jaredei sent some spells to try to exorcise the vampire lord. Jewel became the amorphous mass of tooth and claw that had proven so useful in battle. The five vassals surrounding the dais fled.
Trenton let Pale Scale's lightning hit him, showing no effect. He stood, the Crown of Brilliance falling from his head, and he left the Orb and Scepter on the chair. Koan reached the vampire lord of Kelsan first, with Jewel not far behind, while Pale Scale waited for the opportunity to employ his knives. Jaredei's spells hit Trenton, but he didn't even budge. All magic that touched him disappeared.
Looking down, Trenton saw the panther Koan biting hard onto his leg, and the indescribable mass of Jewel striking into him.
"I tire of this," Trenton said, his voice filling the chamber and coming from all directions at once. "You came to stop the ritual. You came too late." With a laugh, he sent a massive blast at his four assailants, radiating from his body. Koan's feline form disappeared, leaving only a shadow burned onto the stone floor. Pale Scale tried to jump out of the way, but the blast followed him, leaving a large visage of a leaping viashino etched onto the far wall. Jaredei quickly cast a final spell, and with a massive flash of light began to fly out in all directions himself. The priest was already dead when the blast hit him.
In a moment, Jewel's friends were killed by Trenton's immense power. She had been forced to use her innate shapeshifting abilities and hid from Trenton. She could not fight back; planeswalker though she may have become, Trenton's power had been more than a match for her. Only an amulet, created to stop the Robe and it's kin should someone like Trenton find it, had killed him. Only the strangest quirk of fate had saved her, while her friends were slaughtered, either by Trenton or his minions.
A scream pierced the deadly silence of Kelsan, and Jewel immediately gathered her mana, of the sea and forest. It was coming from the fallen Nexus, and, remembering the huge tower, Jewel planeswalked. Instead of sitting on a rooftop, she stood above the street with the remains of the Nexus on the ground around her. Looking around, she saw the person who screamed. Just as quickly, she planeswalked out of sight.
Zazdor.
Zazdor had . . . experimented . . . on her. His tampering had given her her shapeshifting abilities. They had given her a perfect memory. They had allowed her to remember the pain and sorrow of her friend's death. He had been mad before they assaulted Kelsan, and Aerelle banned him from the attack force. Zazdor had ruined her life, and those of others. He was the one surviving remnants of her past life. Jewel wanted vengeance. She reappeared behind the wizard, out of his line of sight.
Casting lightning, the man who now stood with a crystal sword in his belt was shoved to the ground. Jewel's eyes glowed with an eerie blue light, casting the entire area in a cerulean shade. She concentrated on her rage, and let her mana form it's own spells. Bricks and debris and bones flew at the old wizard, who had not yet recovered from her initial attack. She cast more lightning, but found that Zazdor had erected a shield of magic that prevented her attacks.
"Shift Five!" He yelled in delight. "I knew you would be here if you survived! I knew that you would keep your promise and return home with me! You always were so loyal, Shift Five."
Jewel did not respond to the delirious man, but instead summoned a might wind that tossed him and his shield into one of the taller piles of debris. Since ascending, she had learned spells as she needed them. She had banished the devouring fog in the She'lak forest, and had been able to make herself invisible at will. Spells came easily, and she wondered how she knew them.
"Shift Five!" Zazdor cried. "Come to me! Do not be upset at your failings! I can forgive you!"
His words only made her hate him more, and she flung him around again. This time, however, Zazdor took control of her winds and he remained suspended in the air. "If you wish to be naughty, I have other plans for you! This sword holds the souls of the men and women who died here, from centuries ago to the battle that razed his city! They hold knowledge and power! That power will be mine, and you will get it for me! I have plans for you, planeswalker, and you do not have any say in the matter!"
Jewel lost control of her magic as Zazdor assaulted her with his own spells. She stepped back, and braced her mind. Her body was only a reflection of her mind, and if she lost her thoughts, her body would shift into any given form. She may be a planeswalker, but she was still a shapeshifter. She had failed her friends, but she would not fail again and give power to Zazdor. Unless he only imaged the power of the sword that he held. If the sword was even there. Zazdor was, for all his insanity, a formidable illusionist.
She had not thought about having to be defensive. She assumed that since she was a planeswalker she could easily overpower Zazdor. Now she found that she was wrong. Her powers were limited and untrained. Zazdor had years of experience, and none of the constraints of sanity to hold him back.
"A planeswalker!" Zazdor hissed when he realized what she was. "So, you have ascended. That makes it so much easier to transfer the souls! You have left me a shapeshifter and returned a planeswalker! Clever Shift Five!"
His attacked of wind, air, and mental degeneration did not abate, and Jewel only tossed a lightning bolt or beam of energy when she could manage to lose mana. She had erected her own shield, and discovered that Zazdor had let down his to provide mana for his spells. She looked around and saw skeletons being tossed about in Zazdor's fury. Any of those corpses, reduced to bones by rats, could be Aerelle or another of her friends. Sadness overtook Jewel, and her mind fumbled.
Zazdor took the opportunity and summoned a magic barrier that encased the novice planeswalker. He stopped his attacks when he was certain his barrier would keep Jewel and her spells in. "Well, Shift Five, your power has grown substantially. You couldn't even cast spells when I first created you. I hope you come to see the power that I possess exceeds even your own. I will possess knowledge beyond mortal comprehension! You must realize that my power and supremacy are more important that you!"
Jewel did not listen to him. Instead, she mentally traced the seams of her magic prison, looking for a fault, for some weak point. The artificer Asterion had trapped her twice, once in Kledion and once in Kelsan. She was not about to go back to Kledion in a cage. Maybe she could trick Zazdor . . .
She screamed and pressed against the invisible shield. "I'm dying in - !" she interrupted herself with another scream. She saw Zazdor's eyes widen, and knew that Zazdor had been taken off guard. "I am losing my abilities! You have severed me from my power! Soon I will become nothing! Save me, Master!" To punctuate her illusion, she let herself fall to the bottom of her spherical prison. She resented her pleading, but saw it as the only way out.
She kept her magic in reserve. If Zazdor lowered the shield, she would planeswalk away from Kelsan. She would have to take her revenge on him some other time. If he let her go. She hoped that she was not playing too dangerous a game. Zazdor was unpredictable. It was possible that he had not heard her plea and that he thought of some other plan. It was possible he thought that her apparent suffering was something he had intended in the first place.
Suddenly the shield fell, and Jewel blinked out of existence. Instead of the drab ruins of Kelsan, she stood in the lush Forest of Mist. A stream bubbled at her feet, and memories of her past hunting ground and home filled her mind. She had escaped Zazdor, and hoped he did not have the power to follow her.
If she were a mortal, her heart would be pumping and her breath would be short. A planeswalker's body was only what its mind wanted it to be. Jewel still had a bit of shapeshifter left in her, and had discovered that she still had not perfected her shapeshifting abilities. If her mind strayed to an animal for a brief moment, she would become that animal. She no longer needed to shift into a shape. Instead, she simple became it. One second she would appear to be a human, and the next second she could become a mouse. No shifting; just replacement.
She feared that she had much to learn, with nobody to learn from. She still had not paid a silent homage to her friends, but she feared that Zazdor would remain there, waiting. She would have to return at some other time. Until then, she needed to find a place to hide. She had been discovered in She'lak, and she could not stay here in Mistwood. The druids might find her, and she couldn't allow that. She had failed their expectations of keeping the Sovereign Robe safe, and she did not want to explain her failure to them.
There was no where safe to go. Zazdor would be looking for her, and the empires reined everywhere. She did not want to be around people. She was not afraid of them as she once was, but she feared to make new friends, and afraid to fail them, too. She had been granted near immortality, but, so far, it would seem she would live her years in sorrow.
She had tried to kill herself, but found she couldn't. Her body could be healed, and she couldn't bring her thoughts to force herself out of existence. She would have to find a way to redeem herself in her own eyes.
Then the thought hit her. Zazdor had claimed that the people killed at Kelsan were in the sword. If that were true, would Aerelle and Jaredei be there? Would they be trapped inside that artifact? Was it possible? A new hope had been instilled in Jewel, but she knew not how to free them. She could not overtake Zazdor any time soon, and knew that he would destroy the souls before allowing her to free them. Her hope hung on a possibility deduced from something Zazdor said. Her small bit of salvation came from the man that she hated with an otherworldly hatred.
She had things to think about now, and a way to redeem her failings. She only needed a quiet place to think. All the places that she had traveled to with Aerelle would not be safe, nor deserted. She remembered swimming to shore after escaping Kledion, and wondered if it would be possible for her to live underwater, perhaps as a fish. Or did she even need to shift? She had no need of air, so maybe she could go live at the bottom of the sea. No one would bother her there. There would be calmness and peace. She would be able to gather her thoughts, courage, and magic.
Jewel planeswalked away from Mistwood and into the Arctic Channel. Looking about her, scanning the area, she happened upon a tribe of merfolk not far off. She reappeared on the surface before she was discovered, hovering above the waves without a drop of water on her form. Floating above the surf, she pondered what to do next. Looking to the moon, with the Steward just peeking from behind it, she smiled, and planeswalked away.
