Nicol Bolas Questioning Everything After Moving To Bloomburrow

Three Tree City, Bloomburrow — Residents of The Crown have welcomed a peculiar new face to the neighborhood: a kestrel known only as Nicky. “He’s an odd fellow, for sure, but who isn’t in some kinda way?” asked local owl Gennu. “I’ve been around the trees long enough to recognize some young upstart who wants to take on the whole world. Be the fastest bird to fly to the top of the Tip, claim the entirety of the Sunflower Sanctum as their own. But once he gets to my age, he’ll know that the best things in life are taken slowly. Maybe if he still has some political ideas, he can join the HOA.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m at least a hundred thousand years older than you. Probably more.”

Nicky, who was also in attendance, interrupted the owl. “Man, I hate that guy. Anyway, name’s Nick. I think. It’s complicated?” The miniature bird of prey rubbed one of his wings behind his head, his horns scratching at his feathers. “I only really remember what’s happened the last few years because my brother said I did something, but didn’t say what. Also my brother is like a ghost lizard? I think? Anyway we just kinda hung out until these weird little dudes showed up with a cat and one of them said my name was Nick, or Nicky, or something like that. My brother got really mad, so I dipped out when he wasn’t looking. Dude really has a temper for a dead guy.”

As we walked and talked, he continued his known life story while I kept my big mouth shut. He doesn’t seem to know that he tried to enslave the entire multiverse, and I wasn’t going to be the mouse to tell him. “Kinda wandered around for a bit after that, flew through some triangles, the usual. I had this weird, overwhelming desire to enslave… something, but everywhere I went, it was mostly just wild animals and trees. One place was just a big ocean, but I can’t swim, so they got off scot-free.”

“After flying through a few more glowing triangles, I wound up here. All the animals here had souls that I could control, but none of them were afraid of me for some reason? I was like, ‘hey, I’m a giant lizard’ and they were like ‘no you’re not’ and sure enough, shit I’m a bird. And not even a particularly big one, either.” I couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief at this. Dragons invading are definitely a known problem, and something with the power of a former planeswalker the size of a condor wouldn’t be very pleasant. “I had planned a whole speech, too. ‘Bow down before your superior, erect a grand statue to my majesty, lead me to your graves so that I might resurrect a grand army!’ And you know what happened? This mouse lady came up to me, said she was the protector of her town.”

“Mabel?” I offered.

“Yeah, her. And you know what she did? She gave me a muffin. A dang muffin with huge chunks of blueberries in ’em.” Nicky pressed his wings against my shoulders and stared intently into my eyes before he continued. “And they were the best damn muffins I’ve ever had. I mean, I think. Usually muffins are too small for me to enjoy.” He turned away, and looked up to the top of one of the city’s trees. “And there are muffins EVERYWHERE here! Not as good as Mabel’s, but still really good! So I found some cheap real estate and decided to stick around. Now I’m the official vizier of the mayor, you know, the one that was elected after Glarb. Guy needed some help telling off some persistent petitioners, so I gave them a quick trip into the river. I think I’m gonna like it here!”

As a part of my due diligence, I later traveled to Tarkir to inform Ugin of the situation. He simply replied, “Fffffine. That’s fine. Whatever. As long as he’s having fun.”