Leaving Serra's Realm Behind
Chapter 19 is the “time passes” chapter. And a lot of time passes. We’re talking thousands of years compressed into one chapter. Lynn Abbey pulls it off, though.
Urza and Xantcha leave Serra’s realm. Urza carries Xantcha through the between-worlds because she can’t survive the crossing without his help. She’s clutching a chest of gifts from Lady Serra, including a miniature cocoon that’s the perfect container for her amber heart. This detail matters later.
The Search Begins
Urza has a plan. He wants to find the original home of the Phyrexians. The world they came from before they created Phyrexia. His logic is that whoever drove them out must know their weakness. So he and Xantcha begin jumping from world to world, systematically.
Xantcha’s job is simple. Land on a new world, look for Phyrexian infestations, report back. If she finds any, she’s supposed to run and hide. Urza is very clear about this. He thinks she’s a “bell goat” that the Phyrexians can use to track him. He’s rewriting history in his head to make it her fault they were found. Classic Urza.
Xantcha knows the truth. She knows it was because she told him the Ineffable’s name that they were tracked. But she says nothing. She made her choice to stay with him, and she’s accepted who he is. Flaws and all.
What I really like here is how Abbey shows Xantcha becoming a tourist. She trades trinkets, collects stories, learns languages the hard way by actually talking to people. Urza can just skim languages from minds. He never has to work for it. Xantcha does, and she’s better for it. There’s a great scene where she knows more about a world than Urza does because she talked to the locals while he was busy being frustrated that there were no libraries.
“No one here knows a word for war,” she tells him, proving this can’t be the world that defeated the Phyrexians. Simple and devastating.
The Golden Age (That Ends Badly)
They wander for over a thousand years. It’s described as a golden period for Xantcha, and honestly it sounds nice. Every handful of worlds has one worth exploring. She’s free. She’s curious. She’s doing what she was born to do, minus all the Phyrexian baggage.
Then Urza hears about Equilor. A plane at the edge of time. The oldest place in the multiverse. He decides this must be where the Phyrexians came from.
Along the way they stop at a world called Gastal, where other planeswalkers gather. This is one of the few times Urza admits he’s not unique. There are other walkers out there. Some have mortal companions like Xantcha. She meets a blind dwarf named Varrastu who has actually heard of Phyrexia.
Then a predatory planeswalker attacks. The gathering is destroyed. One walker dies. Xantcha nearly dies. Urza drags her through the between-worlds without her armor, and she bleeds out. He spends two years sitting beside her, keeping her alive through sheer force of will.
Two years. And when she wakes up, he tells her he doesn’t need another planeswalker. He needs her.
That’s probably the most genuinely emotional thing Urza has ever said.
Equilor
They finally reach Equilor. And it’s exactly what you’d imagine a world at the edge of time would be. Old. Quiet. Done growing. The mountains are rounded down like they’ve been standing too long. Even the stars are sparse, as if time is running out for the sky itself.
The folk of Equilor are waiting for them. They speak Argivian. They know Urza’s name. They’ve been watching him approach for centuries through whatever weird time-perception they have. A man named Romom greets them at the door. His family feeds Xantcha stew. Everything is white and sparkling clean.
Urza goes up the mountain to meet the elders. These aren’t old people. They’re collective intelligences living inside caves. When the mortal folk of Equilor die, they merge with their ancestors in the mountain. It’s the endgame of civilization. They’ve conquered boredom and desire and ambition.
Urza, of course, decides he’s going to change all of that. He comes back after twenty days raving about how Equilor needs his leadership. He wants to build cities and artifacts. He wants to reshape their entire civilization.
The Equilorans politely listen. Then they get him kicked out. They do it so smoothly that Urza leaves thinking it was his own idea. The elders showed him a vision that the Shard protecting Dominaria has been breached. Urza decides he needs to go home. He tells the Equilorans that they’ll have to complete his vision without him.
The household makes a fair show of grief, and Xantcha almost can’t keep it together. She knows the whole thing was engineered to get rid of him. The ancient Pakuya mutters “if that fool wants to change a world, let him change his own.” Perfect.
It takes them a hundred Dominarian years to walk from Equilor back to Dominaria. And in the spring of the year 3,210 after Urza’s birth, Xantcha finally stands on the world where she was destined to sleep.
This chapter covers literal millennia and somehow it never feels rushed. Abbey is really good at compressing time while keeping the emotional beats honest. The Equilor section is my favorite part. It’s funny and tense and it shows that Urza’s arrogance is so powerful that even a civilization a hundred thousand years old can’t tolerate him for more than a few months.