Wealth and Loss

The legends of Amonkhet speak of the God-Pharaoh and how he formed the world of Amonkhet. They are lies. All of them. The God-Pharaoh is a lie himself. He is not even from Amonkhet, and he blinded the world into devoted worship of him. But this too is a lie. They follow the invisible pulling of the strings he has wrapped around all of their souls. His name… in truth… is Nicol Bolas. He was once a "true god" as he would have characterized himself. And the whole of everything he has planned for this plane of existence is to begin his restoration that he might be freed upon creation anew.

. . . . .

Lie: The God-Pharaoh, the dragon who created the appointed hours for the salvation of Amonkhet, is a benevolent being.

Truth: The dragon is a malevolent deceiver who only came to Amonkhet because it was the one world he discovered with the limited time he possessed that could easily be used.

Lie: The hours shall bring truth and deliverance.

Truth: The Hours are the greatest deception of all, and they have only brought repeated and increasing terror and violence.

Lie: The gods of Amonkhet were only five and formed by the God-Pharaoh.

Truth: There were eight, not formed by Nicol Bolas, and all have served his will, but three are his eternal slaves.

Lie: There is no stopping what has begun or will happen.

Truth: There is no stopping what has begun or will happen.

. . . . .

Days. He had mere days left. Only a small, valuable window of time left before his precious power left him. He was dying. Nicol Bolas was dying. Yet it was not the death of a mortal, but the death of his power.

A plane of existence had been dying and a group of souls had chosen to make the ultimate of sacrifices in order to save the whole of existence. They saved everything… but enacted a great change in the fabric of reality.

He had been merely dreaming certain thoughts upon a certain world when some part of this being had felt it. The cry from his throat was two-fold combination from the depths of his body and soul. "Fraying Omnipotence" he called the most hated occurrence, for the very action that saved all life and existence frayed apart the threads of his power.

His spark! His very being on fire! Power… it was leaching off him like water pouring through the holes in a sieve! He was a helpless being in the grip of a force that he was incapable of preventing from robbing him of what was his!

When at last the feeling passed, he could not help but clutch at his chest. There was a hole. It was more of a feeling than an actual hole, but there was hole, and it was slowly growing. So powerful was he that his power and influence remained… but it would not stay that way.

He straightened and coldly gathered himself together. Time was now his enemy. He had only mere days left in him perhaps. A small window of time that might allow him to accomplish what was to be the beginnings of a plan in his mind.

His tri-clawed hands clenched, and he threw his head back, roaring at the heavens. "I must have it BACK!" He would get back his power, but to do that, he needed those that would build an army for him. He had power, even reduced it would still be formidable, but that would restore him. He needed something that he could not gain by his own hands.

He called upon the power that was within him, and he walked through the barrier separating this world he was upon from others. This was his greatest gift: He was a Planeswalker, capable of traveling to worlds throughout the expanse of creation. His precious time was spent searching for a world that was… soft; pliable. He needed something that he could easily change with his depleting godhood.

The instigator of the Elder Dragon War found Amonkhet. A plane of existence that was cursed with a strange power constantly threatening its inhabitants, one that had nearly consumed all of the living souls upon it. The Curse of Wandering transformed the dead in the desert into unliving husks seeking to kill the living. The gods of Amonkhet had stopped this by surrounding the last city behind a barrier of magic that kept back the zombies preserving life.

Bolas would use this, and the gods. There was one final thing he would use: Those who called loss a good thing and intended to keep the false balance in place; those who had never tasted power and had no intention of doing anything but remaining lost and hopeless.