Return to Dominaria and a Stranger's Welcome
Wait. Let me clarify something about the chapter split here. Chapter 19 covered the journey from Serra’s realm through the multiverse and arriving at Equilor. Chapter 20 goes deeper into the Equilor visit and ends with their return to Dominaria.
So here we are at Equilor, the world at the edge of time, and things are getting weird.
The Household
The family that hosts them is fascinating. Romom and Tessu are apparently husband and wife. There’s an ancient named Pakuya who’s so old you can’t tell if they’re a man or a woman. There are children, including a toddler named Brya who, get this, is eighty years old in Dominarian time. Time moves differently at the edge. Everything stretches out.
They all speak Argivian, which is bizarre. Xantcha understands every word, which has never happened on a new world before. They learned it specifically for this visit. They’ve been preparing.
The household feeds Xantcha stew and makes her bathe (the mountain is watching, Tessu says, and Xantcha can feel it). They watch the sunrise together in total silence. The caves on the mountain flash mirrors in a complex code. The children wake her for morning rituals. It’s calm and structured and completely unlike anything else in this book.
I love the detail about the bathing scene. Xantcha doesn’t want to show her newt body to strangers, but Tessu won’t sleep until the guest has bathed. Customs matter. So Xantcha slips into the starlit pool and realizes the mountain has eyes. Thirty-three of them. She’s standing naked, staring at cave openings that are staring back, and she just freezes. It’s one of the funnier moments in a book that doesn’t have a lot of comedy.
Urza Goes Full Urza
Urza spends twenty days in a cave called Keodoz, communing with an elder who is basically a collective consciousness of merged ancestors. When he comes back down, he’s intoxicated. Not with knowledge of Phyrexia’s weakness. With ambition.
He wants to lead Equilor. He wants to build cities and artifacts. He wants to reshape their civilization.
The Equilorans have been waiting a hundred thousand years. They’ve put “greatness” behind them. They have zero interest in Urza’s vision. Pakuya says “nonsense.” Tessu quietly warns Xantcha that those who go up the mountain don’t always come back down.
“Not here,” Tessu says when Xantcha points out that Urza can melt mountains with his eyes. Two words. Absolute certainty.
Getting Urza Kicked Out (Nicely)
The community is unhappy. Tessu tells Xantcha that something has to be done. Xantcha talks to Urza, but he’s too far gone. He thinks he’s on the verge of converting Keodoz to his cause.
Then a dying star appears in the sky. It brightens until it casts shadows. The adults disappear for the night. The caves flash in unison at dawn, a signal.
Pakuya reads the message: “If that fool wants to change a world, let him change his own!”
And here’s the brilliant part. The elders showed Urza a vision that the Shard he created around Dominaria has been broken. Someone punched through his ultimate defense. Now he has to go home. He’s convinced it was his idea to leave. He tells the household they’ll have to complete his grand vision without him.
The household puts on a great show of sadness. From Pakuya to eighty-year-old toddler Brya, they all say how sorry they are. They wish him well. They offer a feast.
Xantcha can barely stomach the insincerity. But Tessu was right. It’s better that Urza thinks he chose to leave.
Back to Dominaria
It takes them a hundred years to walk the between-worlds back to Dominaria. One hundred years. That’s a sentence that hits you differently when you realize Xantcha has to experience every moment of those crossing attempts, terrified and suffering each time.
In the spring of 3,210 years after Urza’s birth, Xantcha stands on Dominaria for the first time.
This chapter is Abbey at her best. She builds an entire civilization in about fifteen pages, makes you care about them, and then uses them to reveal something true about Urza. He’s not just obsessed with the past. He’s obsessed with being needed. He can’t stand a world that functions without him. Equilor functioned for a hundred thousand years without him and he immediately decided they were doing it wrong.
The Equilorans knew exactly who Urza was. They’d been watching him approach for centuries. And they had a plan for getting rid of him that was so elegant he never even noticed.
That’s power. Real power. The kind that doesn’t need to flash or explode.