Worzel felt the telltale prickling at the back of her neck; her domain was being challenged! It’s someone old, she thought. Someone I know… Thomil! It had been a long time since he had challenged her. Quickly, she called her vassals into action. She would need much mana for this duel, much indeed.
The last time Worzel fought with Thomil, he had focused on the destructive magic of the mountains. It had been a close fight; she still saw in her nightmares the brigade of firebreathers that had pushed her to the brink of submission. Since then, Worzel had learned from a specialist in white magic that there were ways to protect herself from the raw force Thomil loved. Unfortunately, the white magician had been unwilling to part with the knowledge in exchange for her offered artifact; she had been forced to coerce it out of him in other, more violent ways. It took a while, but she was a far more experienced duelist than he, and in time he was forced to yield what she sought.
Worzel soon found that gathering the proper mana for her protective spells was going to be difficult. She needed the mana of the countryside, and disturbances in the ether were preventing her from making the necessary psychic bonds to any of those lands. She had precious little to draw on in the first place, so it could take a while before she managed to get a link to the plains. Just having the knowledge to protect yourself isn’t enough, she thought. Well, let’s see if I can’t stall him with my friends of the forest in the meantime.
Worzel resisted the temptation to invest herself in blue magic, in case the rumor that Thomil had taken to raising serpents had any truth. Now she began to regret the loss of the Glasses of Urza, which might have given her some clue where the focus of his attack would be.
Thomil countered her creatures with a legion of undead. Black magic, she thought. Thomil! I wouldn’t have expected that from you. Thomil had always enjoyed displays of pure power, but she had regarded him as a relatively clean fighter. At least, cleaner than most.
A sudden sense of horror came over Worzel as she felt a large drain on the mana plane— an enormous drain, accompanied by a stink of sulfur and the grave. Something big was coming.
Learned some new tricks since we last met, eh? muttered Worzel, under her breath. Well, so have I, dear Thomil, so have I.It was going to be a tough fight.
Worzel & Thomil, Alpha rulebook,
August 5, 1993.
Reading Time: 2 minutes