Ebony Horse

A flying horse from the Thousand and One Nights cycle, rendered into a rules effect and then left half-finished, which describes a fair chunk of the set's design. The mechanic pulls an attacker out of the combat math entirely: untap it, then erase damage in both directions, so it strikes nothing and takes nothing. Structurally this behaves like a Maze of Ith pointed at your own attackers rather than your opponent's, gated behind a colorless payment and an artifact slot instead of a land drop. That framing exposes the bargain: the card trades the offense-only restriction for repeatability and protection from a blocker's strike, but it taxes you every combat for an effect that later sets folded into static abilities like vigilance and indestructible. It sits at an awkward intersection where the rate is too soft for the protection it offers and the protection too narrow for the rate, which is why nothing in its lineage (Lightning Greaves, Whispersilk Cloak, the equipment that simply grant vigilance) was built on the same chassis. What endures is the flavor: an early, literal attempt to model a mounted hero in cardboard, before the game had keywords for what the artifact was trying to say.