The air is heavy and humid. It clings tightly to your skin, as if releasing its hold on your body would consign it to the fading memories of summer. You have trouble recalling the last time you were able to sit still without sweat slowly running between your shoulder blades. Yet you know it was no more than a few days ago. This heat wave has come fast and hard, and you can only hope that it leaves in the same fashion.

With nothing to do but daydream that tonight will be when the heat chooses to flee before the onslaught of autumn rains, you decide to pay the old man a visit. The stone corridors keep the late day’s sun off of your exhausted limbs, and the air remains at an almost bearable temperature. You dread the old man’s stuffy nook, but you know that it is the price you must pay for a story—that and his moods. With your mind set firm, you push the oak door ajar and step forward.

What is it you want today? I am busy with pests more difficult than you!

It seems that the heat has affected more than just those who work outside, but you keep that thought to yourself.

A tale? You wish to hear a tale in this weather? I have no time for storytelling. I’m busy attempting to pick up the pieces from yet another of Garruk’s temper tantrums. This time, he has decided to dismantle a court of vampires on Innistrad.

Why? Why, you ask?! Because that hulking maniac of a planeswalker is after Liliana Vess and will stop at nothing short of her death or his own. And don’t even bother asking what Liliana has to do with it all; she’s even worse than that mindless Garruk!

No, perhaps not mindless. He is an incredibly intelligent man when he is not smashing something or someone into dust—else he would not have survived being a ’walker this long. He has a tendency to be of only one mind, however.

Your blank face tells me that you fail to understand my words. Must I explain everything to you?

The old man’s face shows a look of pure exasperation, but he continues.

Garruk is a man who seizes an objective and then stops at nothing until it is completed. Were someone to get in his way, Garruk would knock that person aside as quickly as possible, just as he would a mosquito. He thinks only of his goal when he does this, and, more often than not, resorts to brute force to save time. Garruk is not a man to sit down and plan out an avenue toward his goal before setting off to achieve it. Yes, he often summons only the creatures he needs—a wolf instead of a beast or crash of rhinos—but I have never seen him take the time to cast spells that leave his opponents standing.

Why is he so infatuated with beasts and brute force? I could not tell you exactly, but I have my theories. The planeswalker known as Garruk was once a scrawny boy—a boy who lost his father at a very young age. He was lied to and terrorized by the men in authority, and he was forced to live among the beasts of his forest as he came of age.

That explains the beasts, but the tendency toward brute force is more difficult to divine. Perhaps it is a result of the oppression forced upon him. Maybe his years living with unthinking beasts brought out this trait from deep within him. Discovering the cause of a human’s characteristics is a difficult task— a task that this bag of creaking bones is not up to.

So, now Garruk’s strength and dedicated mind are pointed toward a new goal: Liliana Vess. Garruk has gone from hunting beasts as a challenge to hunting the most dangerous foe alive in the multiverse: a planeswalker.

Is he up to the task? The results so far show that he has come a long way, but that he has even further to travel before he will find his quarry.

And what then? Will Garruk kill the seductress? Or simply demand a cure? Is Liliana even capable of returning him to his prior state?

Garruk has never before killed someone who did not deserve it—as deemed by his rules of justice—and I don’t believe that will change, despite the darker influences creeping into his mind. If it comes to that, I have already prepared a few precautionary contingencies.

The old man sighs, as if his earlier frustrations and anger have left him empty and deflated.

While we wait to see how the tale plays out, I must clean up after the massive ’walker. If only he would take a minute to stop and consider the alternatives to this smashing of skulls and buildings. But that is a fool’s wish.

Now out with you! You have taken up enough of my time.

The old man throws his hands toward the door, and then turns away from where you stand. Knowing that there will be no further words from the man named Issar Roon, you take your leave.

The air outside is just as stifling as when you entered the study, but the sun has finally set. Feeling hopeful, you entertain the thought that tomorrow will bring a respite from the current weather.

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