Chapter Two The last thing Tal’en’tara knew before unconsciousness claimed her was the log she was clinging to life on in the open sea . She was alone in the tree - height waves and quite possibly all of Dominaria .   What the Phyrexians didn’t take away, the Planeshifts did .   What remained from that was taken away from the thrice - damned Urza bomb that racked the whole plane asunder .   And the shreds that remain were swept away by the oceans that rushed in to reclaim the land .   In her short life, she had witnessed the erasure of every evidence of where she lived or whatever she lived at all . She thought she died completely alone . But she didn’t die . Because she wasn’t alone . What she first thought was what being dead was like, being lifted from her body, high above the waters, and being carried to a warm soft place with an maternal song in her ears .   She smelled soil again — she almost forgotten what it smelled like — and trees and felt the warmth of a sun and heard animals and heartbeats in her ears, and whatever heavenly place that the afterlife would . . . Wait a minute .   A heartbeat .   Was that heartbeat . . . hers ? Tal opened her eyes, and through the haze she saw someone with fire red hair and two purple sashes around her chest and hips .   A gold pendant hung off her neck .   Tal’s eyes focused, she saw that the being’s ears had a small point to it — half - elven — and a deep tan .