This content was originally included in The Official Urza’s Legacy Game Guide. The author’s website version can be accessed via Wayback Machine here.

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By Will McDermott

Jhoira gazed at the violet and orange strands of clouds spanning the predawn sky above the azure ocean.How calm it is up here, she thought as she steered Weatherlight east toward Jamuraa. What a contrast to the rising and falling tempest of my life.

Lost in thought, she did not notice her companion stride up beside her. “Captain?” asked Karn. “Captain, we are nearing Zhalfir. Should we prepare for landing?”

Jhoira shrugged away the memories and turned to face the large, silver golem.

“Yes, my friend. We’ll make port by breakfast. Why don’t you prepare the crew and inform our passengers. And, Karn?”

Yes, Captain?”

“Please don’t call me Captain. After this trip, I plan to leave my short nautical career behind me. I only agreed to this mission because I never got a chance to say goodbye to Teferi.”

“You care for him a great deal,” Although his shadow completely enveloped the Ghitu woman and most of the room, Karn looked as small and vulnerable as a young pup.

Jhoira reached out and clutched his large, silver hand between her own small, callused, almond brown hands.

“Yes, I do. Almost as much as I care for you, my old friend. Teferi and I grew up at the academy together, almost died together when Urza’s time experiment sundered Tolaria, and
worked together creating the metal for this ship. Teferi has been a large part of my life, and so have you. You’re…the only family I’ve had for a very long time…”

“Land Ho!” came the call from the crow’s nest.

“Better make your preparations, Karn. We should bring this ship down into the water before anyone on the coast catches sight of us.

“Aye, Aye Cap…Jhoira.”

Although she glided effortlessly through the air like a falcon seeking prey, the Weatherlight moved with all the grace of a war mammoth in the ocean. Jhoira had little practice navigating the ship in the water, but much of the crew had sailed aboard New Tolaria with Teferi, so they eventually wrestled her into her moorings.

The Royal Mage of Zhalfir awaited them on shore, his smile a beacon that nearly outshone the morning sun.

Teferi extended his arms toward the ship and shouted, “Jhoira, Karn. Welcome to Zhalfir. I’m glad you didn’t destroy our docks.”

“Very funny. This isn’t a little dinghy like New Tolaria, you know,” retorted Jhoira as she descended a gangplank that Karn had easily tossed to the dock.

The two old friends met on the deck, looked awkwardly at each other for a moment, and then wrapped each other in a bear hug.

“Are you sure it’s alright for the Royal Mage of Zhalfir to hug a sailor in public?” asked Jhoira as she broke away and poked Teferi in the ribs.

Karn was beside them before Teferi could muster a reply.

“Good morning, master Teferi. How have you been since we last met?”

“Ah, Karn,” replied Teferi. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you both. Life here is grand, but sometimes I do find myself yearning for a good near death experience. Which reminds me, you have some refugees from Serra’s Realm on the ship, don’t you? I take it everything went well on the rescue mission?”

“As well as could be expected on Weatherlight’s maiden voyage” sighed Jhoira. “Although it is a bit of a long story.”

“Of course, of course,” Teferi grabbed the hands of his two friends, turned them away from the ship, and began walking toward the city.

“Listen, Zhalfirin officials are on hand to process the refugees. What do you say we find a quiet room, some comfortable chairs, and a little food, and then wile away the morning with tales of adventure. I have to attend a gala later to welcome our new residents to Zhalfir, but I have a few hours of peace.”

“We’ need to depart by noon to begin our return trip,” said Jhoira, “but I could use a few hours of food, friends, and stories after our recent adventures.”

After a sumptuous breakfast of steak and Wyvern eggs, the trio retired to Teferi’s sitting room. As she reclined in a leather chair in front of the crackling fire, Jhoira couldn’t help feeling a little guilty, since she was sure the rest of her crew was not receiving such special attention.

A servant brought in a tray of pastries and a steaming hot kettle of tea.

“No pastries for me, thank you,” said Jhoira, shaking her hand at the proffered dish. “Some tea would be nice, though.”

The servant looked at the large silver man standing behind Jhoira’s chair for a moment, as if considering whether to offer the plate to him. She must have thought better of it, as she merely served the tea and quietly left the room.

“They don’t know what to make of you, Karn,” said Teferi. “You know you don’t have to stand. These chairs are sturdy enough even for you.”

“I prefer to stand,” said Karn, stoically.

After savoring his pastry, Teferi looked at his two comrades and said, “You both look exhausted. Rescuing those refugees must have been more difficult than Urza expected. Tell me all about it.”

“Well, you know a lot of the story already. Weatherlight was nearly complete, and Urza needed some way to charge the stone that would power the ship. To infuse the stone with enough power, Urza believed he would have to capture the power of a collapsing plane. He knew Serra’s Realm would eventually collapse, so he traveled there to talk to Serra.

“Unfortunately, Serra’s realm had deteriorated further than Urza had expected and Serra was no longer in charge. You see, after Urza’s last trip to her Realm, Phyrexian Negators invaded searching for Urza. According to the refugees, Serra’s warriors defeated the Negators, but Serra left because the taint of that evil on her Realm was too much for her to bear.”

Jhoira took a sip of her tea and continued.“After Serra left, an archangel named Radiant took charge and things began to change. The Realm, that under Serra had been dedicated to
the search for truth and beauty, changed to a world of military might and strict order.”

“Plus the taint of Phyrexia still lingered,” added Karn. “A Phyrexian agent had gained influence over Radiant and turned her against her people, convincing her the Serrans were
the Phyrexians.”

“Yes,” continued Jhoira. “By the time Urza arrived, Radiant was in the middle of a holy war to rid the plane of this imaginary Phyrexian element. Driven deep into madness by the Phyrexian agent at her side, Radiant was committing genocide on her own people. Needless to say, Urza was not welcomed with open arms.”

Teferi glanced. “Go on. I’m listening. I just need to stoke the fire.” With that, he faced the fire, intertwined his thumbs together and raised the fingers of both hands. Teferi then quickly and fluidly lowered and raised his fingers in a wave from forefinger to pinky three times. Each time, the fire rose higher in the hearth.

Caught up in his display, Jhoira waited until Teferi finished the spell before continuing.

“Once Urza realized what was happening, he returned to Tolaria to make plans to save Serra’s residents before Radiant destroyed them all. Everything hinged on getting Weatherlight operational. Urza made forays into Serra’s Realm to spread the word of our rescue attempt and to save as many refugees as he could.”

“At this point,” Karn added, “Urza realized the plane was collapsing even more rapidly. Radiant’s war upon her people had actually accelerated the decay; every death decreased the power and size of Serra’s once glorious Realm.”

“By the time Weatherlight was complete, the plane’s collapse was imminent,” continued Jhoira, the stress of retelling the tale evident in her voice. “We only had enough power for one desperate rescue attempt, and the lives of thousands depended on us. It was a pitched battle that I truly don’t wish to relive. We made it out of the realm as it collapsed around us. But in its destruction, Weatherlight’s power stone became fully charged. Serra’s legacy lives on in the heart of the ship.”

She stopped talking and stared at the now cold cup of tea in her hand. A silence descended on the room as the rugs on the walls absorbed the echoes of her words. Karn carefully placed a large silver hand on Jhoira’s shoulder. Eventually the silver man broke the silence.

“So, master Teferi. Tell us about your life here in Jamuraa.”

Teferi smiled. “What’s there to tell? The king works me like a dog and forces me to live in squalor, as you can see,” he said, gesturing at the luxuriant room around them. “Actually, I am quite happy to be home and helping my people. Plus, being Royal Mage has certain advantages. As we’re at relative peace right now, most of my time is my own, so I have time to pursue other interests.”

“Quite a difference from Tolaria, isn’t it?” remarked Jhoira, brightening up a little. “Being one of Urza’s students was always a full time job.”

“Exactly,” stated Teferi. “I think I’ve had more time to myself in the last few months than I had in fifty years on Tolaria.”

“Yes we’ve all outlived our normal lifespan. Urza’s time experiments affected us as much as they affected Tolaria. It may be centuries before we realize all the repercussions,” added Jhoira.

“Speak for yourself, artificer,” quipped Teferi. “I am a master mage. I like to think I will eventually conquer time. In fact, I have some interesting ideas about time manipulation that I’ve been dabbling with lately…”

“What?” cried Jhoira. “Are you crazy?” Urza’s time experiments almost got us all killed…did kill many of our friends and trapped you in a slow time bubble where you spent thirty years on fire!”

“Not to mention stranding Jhoira on the island for ten years where she had to fend for herself amidst all the time distortions,” added Karn quietly.

“Of course to my sense of time, the fire only lasted about thirty seconds; just long enough to engulf my cloak. Granted it was thirty terrifying seconds that I will remember for as long as I live,” replied Teferi.

Jhoira straightened up in the chair and pointed her finger at Teferi.

“And don’t forget that when Urza’s time experiment blew up in his face, he escaped with only Barrin and a dozen students. If it weren’t for Karn, the rest would surely have died. I only survived the ten years it took for Urza to return by painstakingly mapping out the boundaries of all the time rifts.”

“So I had it easy being on fire all that time,” Teferi quipped and quickly smiled as he saw Jhoira’s face redden.

“No, of course not,” replied Jhoira. “But, by the time Urza, Barrin, and Karn returned on New Tolaria, everyone I had known at the Academy, except you, had died — either from the explosion or from the effects of the time rifts. Yes, the time bubbles eventually allowed us to do great things at the new Academy. We could spend years on experiments in a fast time
area while only hours or days passed in the rest of the academy. Yes, slow time water allowed us to live well beyond our natural life span. But, don’t ever forget the terrible costs of all that progress.”

“And don’t forget about Kerrick and his Negators,” added Karn. “The fight to regain Tolaria was not just against the time rifts the explosion created. That horrid sleeper agent, Kerrick, was trapped in a large, fast time rift by the explosion and used his accelerated time well, creating generations of Negators in a year’s time.”

“Yes, I remember,” remarked Teferi. “Kerrick had us all fooled at the beginning… well you two at least. By the time you and Urza rescued me from my fiery prison, the war against Kerrick was in full force. How long did it take us to finally rid the isle of that loathsome creature?”

“Let me see,” said Karn. “You were trapped for at least twenty years after Urza returned.The Negators finally evolved far enough to be able to traverse the time rift about ten years after that. I think we skirmished with them for five more years, losing ground all the time.And then Urza was lost in Yavimaya for another five years.”

“That’s right,” chimed in Teferi, as he gestured at the logs near the fire and watched one rise from the pile and drop onto the darkening fire. “By then, you, Jhoira, and I were all working at the Mana Rig, while Barrin fought a losing war against generation after generation of Negators. We had no idea how bad things had gotten and poor Barrin couldn’t contact Urza. You know, Urza never did explain what happened to him in Yavimaya.”

“That’s true,” mused Jhoira. “But, he came back, mustered all our forces together and finally put an end to the Phyrexian invasion of Tolaria.”

“With some help from yours truly,” quipped the smiling Teferi as he poured more tea for himself and Jhoira.

“You and an army of goblins and Viashino, and a couple dragons,” Jhoira shot back as she picked up her cup once again.

“Don’t forget Multani,” added Karn. “Without his help, we never would have tracked down and destroyed all the monsters that slipped into the forest that night. Urza was lucky Multani came back with him from Yavimaya.”

“That was another odd thing about that day,” mused Teferi. “I don’t remember seeing Multani until the end of the battle. How did he get to Tolaria?”

“I doubt we’ll ever know the whole story,” replied Jhoira as she sipped at her tea. “Urza is an enigma and doesn’t reveal anything he doesn’t want revealed. Remember, it wasn’t until he left to find the Mana Rig that we knew he was Urza Planeswalker. Up until then, we all called him Master Malzra.”

“That was an exciting time, wasn’t it,” exclaimed Teferi, grinning again. “Malzra left on a secret mission to Shiv and then returned
and planeswalked the three of us to the Mana Rig. You know, I never felt so alive as during that planeswalk. It was like walking on clouds in a rainstorm through a rainbow. The colors were vibrant yet misty —at the same time.”

“That’s not how I would have described it,” replied Jhoira. “I don’t know about you, but I shut my eyes as soon as the world dropped away and took my stomach with it. I spent the entire trip trying to keep my lunch inside my body. I’ve gotten more used to it since that first time, but I still keep my eyes closed. What about you, Karn?”

Karn closed his eyes, as if he were looking at the scene inside his head. “I have no stomach, so don’t know if I lost it. I did not see any colors, though I did keep my eyes open. It was a different sensation from moving through time. Moving through time was like walking against a windstorm, while walking through the planes seemed more like floating in water…which I don’t.”

“Karn, you made a joke!” exclaimed Teferi. “I’m glad to see the events after the planeswalk didn’t have any lasting effect on your upbeat demeanor.”

“Yes,” said Karn. “My time at the rig was troublesome.”

“I’m sorry Urza put you in such a difficult position, Karn,” replied Jhoira as she refilled her tea cup again. “For me, I finally felt alive again when we were working to bring the Mana Rig up to full production. I was home in Shiv and working on the largest artifact I’d ever seen. That’s why I left Shiv in the first place; to learn about artifice and bring that knowledge back to my people.”

“I didn’t see any Ghitu in Shiv. I saw a lot of goblins and viashino, however. Something about a war, wasn’t there?” asked Teferi as he grabbed another pastry off the tray.

“A war you nearly started,” replied Jhoira.

“You were there, too. How were we supposed to know that part of the Rig was sacred to the goblins?” asked Teferi with an impish grin.

“Perhaps the fact that the viashino— Fire Eye himself, in fact —had forbade us to enter should have been warning enough,” responded Jhoira.

“But, if we hadn’t gone down there, Urza never would have gotten the Rig functioning at full capacity, since we realized that the Thran built large sections of the Rig with goblins in mind as the work force during that excursion. Without the help of the goblins, Urza couldn’t run the Rig.”

“It was a good thing for all of us that Urza was able to broker peace between the various goblin tribes and the viashino,” remarked Jhoira. “Otherwise you and I would be dead and the Mana Rig would still be a war zone. As it was, that peace became awfully fragile any time Urza left.”

“Still,” Teferi continued, “you have to admit that between the three of us repairing the Mana Rig, the goblins producing Thran metal, and the viashino working the metal to Urza’s specifications, we made some pretty amazing things, including the superstructure of that flying ship of yours. I’m still amazed Urza was able to combine metal and living wood into anything that worked, much less a flying ship.

“Yavimaya…well Multani, the maro-sorceror… helped a great deal. To look at Weatherlight, you would never guess it’s part Thran metal, part living tree,” said Jhoira.

“The ship is truly alive,” remarked Karn.

“Well,” Jhoira sighed. “The morning is waning. I’m sure you must have much to prepare for this after-noon’s festivities, Teferi. And I must prepare for our return to Tolaria. Thank you for the food and the conversation…”

“Actually,” interrupted Teferi, “I did have an ulterior motive to this
meeting. There is something I want to ask you, Jhoira.”

“Oh?”

Teferi cleared his throat and rose from his chair. He paced over to the fireplace and back before stopping in front of Jhoira. He took her small hand in his and looked into her eyes while the large silver golem stared down at them both.

“Jhoira. I am happy here. This is my home and I finally understand my place in this world. But, I still feel like there is something missing. Talking with you today confirmed it. I need you in my life.”

Karn shifted his weight,startling the two young former students.

Teferi continued, “I want you to stay here with me. You can be the royal artificer, but you can be more than that to me. I want you to be my partner, my companion, my…wife. You don’t have to answer now. Think about it on your return trip. I will be in Tolaria in a few weeks. You can give me your answer then.”

Jhoira glanced down at her feet and then back at her silver companion before looking back into Teferi’s eyes.“I will let you know.”

“I will let you know.”

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As Jhoira and Karn walked back to the docks, Karn remained silent, but Jhoira could sense his thoughts and his mood.

“I’m going to turn him down. I thought you should know.”

“Why? I always thought you two would get together eventually.”

“Maybe we will some day. But I’ve spent most of my life following Urza’s dreams, so I’m not ready to spend the rest of my life following Teferi’s dreams. I need to live some of my life for me. And, like Teferi, I want to give something back to my people. I told you earlier today that I would be leaving my nautical career behind me after this trip. That’s because I’m planning to go back to Shiv to become an artificer for the Ghitu, my people.”

“You’re leaving us?”

“That has always been my plan, Karn. I wanted to learn artifice from the masters at Tolaria, so I cold take that knowledge back with me to help my people. I’m a couple generations late now, but I need to do this; for me and for the Ghitu. I hope you understand.”

“Can I…can I visit you?” asked the mournful golem.

“Of course. I wouldn’t be much of an artificer if I never got to see my favorite artifact.”

“When will you tell Teferi.”

“I’ll tell him when he comes to Tolaria. It will take me at least a couple weeks to prepare for my return home anyway. Beside, we don’t need Teferi moping around at an official function. I’m sure he’ll get over me. He’s not one to dwell too long on the present. His mind is ever on the future.”