Ravnica

by Cory Herndon

  This thing had been watching him long enough to see Nyausz. But for how long before that?

  “Kos should have stayed in bed,” the faux ogre rumbled.

  “Lupul should have stayed human,” Feather said. Kos wasn’t sure how the angel managed it, but somehow she had maneuvered behind the worm-thing. She plunged her flaming sword though the shapeshifter’s torso, then did something else Kos had never seen her do: She cast a spell.

  “Henar, talrandav, krozokin,” the angel said. Her blade, embedded in the ersatz ogre’s chest, flared brightly. The flash burned so intensely and briefly that the heat made Kos cover his eyes and look away.

  When he turned back around, he saw Feather standing before a pile of blackened ashes, soot, and smoldering carbon. The angel’s sword blade was gone, immolated in the fireball, and her extended hand looked red and painfully burnt. Soot smudged the angel’s face, and ash settled out of the air.

  Finally, they released their collectively held breath and moved again. Helligan dropped to his knees and began to scrape the carbon into his test tubes. Jarad eyed the angel warily, and Fonn stood defensively next to Biracazir, who was sniffing the air with the wolfish approximation of a grimace.

  “Feather,” Kos said, “how long have you known that trick?”

  “A while,” Feather admitted. She turned to Fonn and asked, “You’ve seen this creature before, or one like it?”

  “Yes,” Jarad said.

  “It attacked us—Jarad, actually, from what it said—in Old Rav,” Fonn explained. “Jarad chased it away. What did you call it?”

  “Its name is Lupul,” the angel said, “from the ancient Ravi for ‘lurker.’ It is a shapeshifter and a spy for sinister things that do not dare show themselves on the surface. If Lupul is here, we are being watched by more than the Golgari.”

  “What’s it doing here?” Kos asked. “What sinister things? Why am I just finding out about this now, Feather?”

  “I did not know it still existed,” Feather said. “We believed the last colony was destroyed thousands of years ago, and the—their master imprisoned.”

  “But how did Phaskin end up—Wait, ‘master imprisoned?’” Kos’s question was cut short by the sound of shouts coming from outside. Someone was attacking the Leaguehall, and it didn’t take an angel to guess who the attackers were. A quietman crashed headfirst through the glass and tackled Feather, sending the two of them flying into a cabinet full of more glass jars, which shattered against the floor, covering it with formaldehyde and preservative elixirs.

  The crash snapped the stunned group out of their shock, and Kos scooped Phaskin’s silver baton from the floor—that much of him, at least, had been real. The quietman, pristine white robe torn by broken glass and soaked through with blood, crouched and leaped over his head like an acrobat. It would have made the leap if Feather had been just a bit shorter, but instead her hand shot out like a whip and snagged the Selesnyan vessel’s ankle. The angel let the quietman’s momentum carry him downward and slammed the mad thing against the laboratory floor. The quietman responded with a brutal horse kick to Feather’s knee that sent her tumbling sideways, and she collided with the snarling wolf.

  Kos tried to get his pendrek around before the white-robed figure could get up, but the quietman was just too fast. It snapped a fist into Kos’s forearm and knocked the baton out of his grip. His short sword had cleared half the scabbard when the quietman swept out with a wide kick, knocking the ’jek’s feet out from under him as it bounced back into a crouch and brought a knee into Kos’s stomach before he reached the floor. He went down retching.

  It had taken Fonn a bit longer than the others to react, still dazed from the encounter with Bayul. She drew her long sword and turned to face the quietman. Facing was about as far as she got. The quietman leaped at her with a spinning aerial kick that knocked her sword back against a shelf full of jars and specimens, sending shattered glass over the wall and floor and slicing into the back of her hand. The sword stuck in the wall above the shelf. Fonn managed to hold onto it and used it to lever herself into the air for her own scissor kick, but the quietman easily caught her ankle and threw her across the lab, where she landed atop the still-coughing Kos, sending both back into the shards of glass and slick blood on the floor.

  Jarad attempted to strike from the quietman’s blind side, but apparently the faceless humanoid didn’t have a blind side. It slammed an elbow into the surprised Devkarin without so much as moving its head and followed through with a backhand fist to the face that knocked Jarad against a metal post with a clang. He slumped motionless to the floor.

  “It could be worse. At least it’s just one of them,” Borca said, then added, “Kos, look out!”

  Kos desperately flailed for the dropped pendrek as the quietman turned and floated toward him. The ’jek managed to snap the baton into wand mode just as the blood-spattered figure reached him. He aimed it like a crossbow and barked the command word that would release the weapon’s energy in a single deadly shot. “Vrazi!”

  Nothing happened. The quietman jerked the baton from his hands, and he saw why—the ersatz Phaskin had removed the battery. Kos, you old fool, always check your own weapons, he thought. This was getting to be a habit. The quietman tossed the baton over its shoulder and struck Feather in the forehead just as she, too, was getting back up, and the blow knocked her over backward again.

  The quietman raised a booted foot over Kos’s head, and he weakly held up a hand to stave off the death blow.

  A blazing, red ball of energy shot from somewhere in the wall over the dead loxodon and slammed into the quietman’s back. The fireball swallowed the figure, and soon it was awash in flames. The energy ignited the quietman’s robes as Kos crawled away to avoid the blasting heat. One foot still comically in the air, it flared and sputtered another few seconds and finally fell over backward. The magical fire flickered for a short time longer then extinguished itself.

  “Feather?” Kos managed, squinting through the blood from the tiny glass-cuts on his face. He got to his knees, trying to focus on the angel, the pungent odor of braised quietman flooding his nostrils and lungs. “Was that you?”

  “No, it was me,” Pivlic said. With a clang he kicked out the grate covering a wall-mounted vent and wriggled out of the enclosure. He dropped easily to his feet before the dead loxodon and took in the scene. He held a smoking bam-stick twice the size of the ones Jarad and Fonn had found. Its four extract globes glowed bright orange.

  “What are you doing here?” Kos asked.

  “Some thanks,” Pivlic said. “Do you have any idea how long it took to get through those vents with these wings, my friend?”

  “Kos,” Feather said, “look at that.” The angel pointed at the fallen quietman, whose linen covering had burned away to reveal a head and shoulders. The hair was ashes, and the eyes were gone, but the face was one Kos recognized. It was the face of a merchant who just a few days ago had been looking for his dead wife.

  “Folks,” Kos said, “I think something very strange has happened to the quietmen.”

  “Kos, you don’t know the half of it,” Borca said. “Watch out!”

  “What?” Kos said. He turned back to the shattered window in time to see a pair of quietmen enter, their movements concealed by the riot in the ’hall and the cacophony in the lab. They slammed into Fonn, hooked her by either elbow, and hauled her through the door on the other side of the room before anyone but Kos and Borca saw them coming. Fonn screamed and kicked before she and her captors disappeared down the hall.

  Biracazir followed them with an enraged howl. Kos, Feather, and Jarad shared a stunned look, then bounded after them.

  “Keep everything on ice,” Kos shouted over his shoulder to Helligan. “We’ll be right back. I hope.”

  * * * * *

  Ludmilla sat tall in the saddle of her lizard mount and surveyed the destruction. The foolish wojeks had long relied on the presence of the Tenth’s stone titan to fend off any
attack, but the gorgon knew the giant had not actually moved for thousands of years. Over that time, Centerfort and the immediate environs had grown up all around the towering granite warrior, and now that lack of foresight was going to come back to haunt the League of Wojek.

  Speaking of lack of foresight, a skyjek had chosen that moment to charge the gorgon from the sky. Ludmilla simply snapped her eyes up and glared. The rider raised an arm before her face, but the roc she rode upon didn’t have that option. In seconds it turned to stone and crashed against the red brick of Rokiric Pavilion like thunder. The hapless skyjek’s body lay mangled beyond recognition amid the shattered rock.

  Even her own soldiers gave her a wide birth, but the ’jeks were obviously getting more desperate. She reined in her mount and summoned three Devkarin hunters. She had a job for them.

  “Trasssz, Zsssurno, Varl,” she hissed, “take a phalanxsss of burrow-pedesss. Pull them off the wallsss and get them under the titan.”

  Trasz nodded and smiled, instinctively averting his eyes to avoid an accidental look at the gorgon’s unmasked face. “It should prove easy prey, Commander,” he said with a grin.

  Impersonating a wojek officer is strictly prohibited.

  —City Ordinances of Ravnica

  28 ZUUN 9999 Z.C., BEFORE DAWN

  It took Kos’s small party a half hour to fight their way through the Leaguehall and back outside, where Pivlic’s battered yacht zepp waited. Quietmen—if they really were quietmen; seeing Wenvel Kolkin’s scorched face under the linen wrappings had made him question even that—were everywhere inside the Leaguehall, attacking any ’jek who moved. The two who had taken Fonn, however, were nowhere to be seen.

  At first there was no organized defense, but several ’jeks were regrouping, overturning desks and shelves to build makeshift bastions. They were hitting back with some coordination by the time Kos, Pivlic, and the others made it to the double doors hot on the heels of Biracazir. Kos desperately wanted to stay and defend his fellow ’jeks, but as they emerged into the dim predawn, they spotted Fonn above them in the distance. Her captors carried her in a beeline for the center and, Kos assumed, Vitu Ghazi.

  Kos could still barely wrap his mind around what had happened. How long had Phaskin been one of those Lupul things? Was he the only one? Could he even trust those with him? He had to assume so. If an imposter was with him now, it surely would have reverted to form when Phaskin did. He wanted to ask Feather a thousand questions about what she knew about the lurker, but there was simply no time. Nor had he or Feather been able to figure out how Wenvel Kolkin had gone from distressed tourist to quietman in the space of a few days. It made Kos realize how little he or anyone really knew about the Conclave and its masked servants.

  One way or another, they were headed for answers. They would get to Vitu Ghazi and save Fonn, or they would die trying.

  Feather reached the doors first and swung them outward, letting in the cold air and revealing the predawn sky. They stumbled out onto the steps, Kos still picking bits of glass out of his face. “You look terrible,” Borca’s ghost offered. “You’re a bloody mess.”

  Kos looked around the steps and the plaza in front of the hall, all modeled on the original Leaguehall in Centerfort. The quietmen were nowhere to be seen, but it appeared they’d had a chance to strike Pivlic’s yacht zepp before they stormed the Leaguehall. The remaining speed-pod lay in pieces on the red brick, and the great lizard was wheezing. Several of its gas bladders had been punctured, but it still floated lazily a few feet off the ground.

  “Those stinking …” Pivlic said. “She never hurt anyone.” Kos had never heard the good-natured imp sound so angry.

  “Do you think you can get the creature airborne?” Feather asked.

  “Maybe,” the imp replied, “but without the pods and with those injuries, she’d never make it, yes? We might as well paint targets on our bodies and head back into the ’hall, my angelic friend.”

  The double doors behind them burst open with a crash, and Kos saw Lieutenant Migellic, Staff Sergeant Ringor—with an uncharacteristically grim set to his jaw and blood in his eye—and a small phalanx of ’jeks framed in the doorway. They were spattered with blood and bits of white fabric stained red, but they were all very much alive.

  “Kos!” Migellic shouted to her fellow lieutenant. “What are you doing? Get back in here, the ’hall is under siege.”

  “I know,” Kos said, jogging up to them. “The ledev that survived the bombing might be able to stop them, but they took her. Probably to Vitu Ghazi. We’re trying to catch them. Do you know if there are any mounts not already at Centerfort?”

  Migellic looked over Kos’s shoulder at the broken zeppelid and the scattered bodies of the unfortunate guards that had tried to stop the onslaught of the quietmen. “No,” she said. “They’ve all been dispatched, and I hope that doesn’t turn out to be a mistake.” Like Kos, Migellic had worked the Tenth for a long time and regularly saw things that could drive an average person mad. Yet she always took it in stride. For Migellic, the single eyebrow she raised spoke volumes, and her bitter tone was like anyone else screaming in panic. “Good luck. If the bastards in that tree are as crazy as the bastards in here or the bastards attacking the ’fort, you’ve got your work cut out for you. We’ll try to leave the ’hall standing until you get back.”

  Kos nodded. With Phaskin gone, Migellic would have to hold the Tenth together. His guilt at fleeing the scene was alleviated somewhat. “Ringor,” he said to the staff sergeant, “I’m sorry about Phaskin. It happened too quickly to stop.” He didn’t add what Phaskin had become just before his death. Kos still wasn’t sure he actually believed it. For that matter, he couldn’t be sure Ringor was Ringor, but the fact that he was standing here was strong evidence that Phaskin’s brother-in-law was just who he appeared to be.

  The formerly mild-mannered man growled at Kos. “Just kill a few when you get there, Kos. Something’s opened up the gates of the abyss,” he waved a sword at the distance swarm of quietmen that flitted in the glowposts of Centerfort, “and if the Conclave can’t stop that, we’re all as good as dead.”

  Kos threw his comrades a quick salute. They shut the doors behind him and returned to the fighting inside. Kos took another look at the injured zeppelid and sighed. They had to get to the center fast, and he could think of only one way to do it. Razia, forgive me, he prayed to the Boros’s angelic guildmaster, but if you have to blame anyone for this, blame me, not her.

  He scratched the back of Biracazir’s neck—the wolf had seemed to understand he was with them once he saw Fonn carried off in the distance, but he still growled—and turned to the angel.

  “Feather,” Kos said, “we’ve got the get to Vitu Ghazi, and you’re the only one who can get us there. I’ve never asked what you did to get your transfer to the League, but whatever it was the other angels couldn’t have meant for you to be crippled in the event of an attack on the city.”

  Feather nodded and slipped her heavy cloak from her shoulders. “Kos, you do not need to justify your request. I shall deal with the consequences. But I need your assistance. I am unable to remove the bonds myself.”

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Pivlic asked.

  “The only thing I can,” the angel said. She turned her back to Kos. He took a quick look at the bindings, closer than he ever had before. Each silver clamp closed seamlessly around her wings.

  “Feather, how do I do this?” Kos asked.

  “You must simply wish it, then place your hands upon the bindings,” she said.

  “That’s it? Why didn’t you ask me to help you out of these be—never mind.”

  There was a series of pings as Kos focused all his will on the bindings, and one by one the restraints opened beneath the ’jek’s fingers. For the first time since he’d met her, the angel Feather spread her wings in the first faint rays of the morning sun.

  Kos took one look at the angel’s blazing eyes and realized he might never have really me
t Feather before at all.

  “Uh, Feather?” Kos asked, “Are you all right?”

  The angels flexed her wings experimentally and let them lift her a few feet off the ground. “Very much so,” Feather replied, hovering. “Mr. Pivlic, have you any rope?”

  * * * * *

  A gaping sinkhole opened directly under the stone titan’s massive feet, an entire section of the baked earth removed by Ludmilla’s strategy. As its own weight broke through the thin layer of stone the burrow-pedes left behind, the Tenth’s sentinel titan dropped down hard, as a giant made of stone might be expected to do, and at exactly the wrong angle as far as its legs were concerned. It didn’t fall far, only up to the top of its granite shins, but it was far enough. The toes of its feet, not designed to support Zobor’s weight at that angle, struck the solid ground and snapped off. This made the entire titan lean forward, and after a few agonizing seconds and a rapid-fire series of cracks and pops Zobor’s legs snapped off at the knees. The titan fell face-first onto and through the outer wall of Centerfort, sending surprised wojeks, along with their catapults and ballistae, flying from atop its head on the way down.

  A tremendous boom shook the entire city as the titan completed its slow dead-man’s drop into the center of the wide-open pavilion, shattering the red brick and golden fountains but not much else. Most of the citizens and guildless who would have been there had already fled. The top of the titan’s head ended up embedded in the base of the famed and ancient Tower of Thismi, one of the few relics of Ravnica that had survived as long as the sentinel titans themselves. Ludmilla found it fitting that the tower snapped off at its base and tumbled in pieces onto the fallen sentinel’s back. The tower disintegrated as it struck, fracturing the titan’s shoulders before the crippled giant could even try to push itself back up. Cracks rapidly ran down the thing’s arms and crisscrossed its back, and soon the weight of the massive limbs broke them free of the enormous torso at the joints. The Tenth’s sentinel titan was limbless, useless, and for all intents and purposes, dead.