Before Nahiri's expedition, Akiri and Zareth explore the Umara River Gorge. Their partnership joins a line-slinger's discipline to a trickster's resourcefulness, while memories of the Eldrazi repeatedly intrude on ordinary travel. Akiri wants recovered knowledge to give Zendikar's people practical control over their future.
The Magosi Portage shows recovery taking a less spectacular form: trade, food, rest and a usable passage through dangerous terrain. Akiri and Zareth escort a merfolk caravan down the steps. When a vast serpent attacks, Akiri tries to protect the travellers while searching for a way through an encounter that offers no clean victory.
Zareth throws himself away from the serpent, forcing Akiri to catch him rather than stay with the trapped caravan. She saves him, but the travellers are lost. She saves him, but neither can turn the choice into a triumph. They are left with the same painful pattern that followed the Eldrazi battle: the pair survives, while others do not.
These journeys give the later expedition its emotional stakes. Akiri's wish to heal Zendikar is grounded in work done beside other people. Zareth knows how rapidly an impossible choice can become an excuse. Their bond contains loyalty, guilt and disagreement long before a planeswalker promises a cure.