by Doug Beyer
Emmara looked into the haze ahead, and saw a private club building marked with the demonic symbol of the Rakdos and the name “The Rough Crowd.”
“Woodshapers! Elementals! Cavalry!” Trostani called. “Shake it to the foundation!”
As the Selesnya army neared, Rakdos warriors began pouring out of the club as if it were a barracks. Emmara balled her fists.
Jace had already fooled the Rakdos with minor illusions. Parlor tricks wouldn’t sway them again. But there was no way he was going to beat an army of demon-worshiping sadists with individual psychic attacks. It was time to unleash major magic.
Ruric Thar and his band of Gruul brutes were already slicing into the Rakdos, and the war party’s savagery was shocking. Bodies of broken cultists went flying as the Gruul slammed into the horde, swinging great blows of blunt might. But the Rakdos horde kept coming, and they surrounded the Gruul in moments, tearing at them with jagged blades and spiked whips.
“Look, my pets!” came a crazed female voice. In the middle of the rampaging Rakdos horde, the blood-witch Exava stood atop a war tower, carried aloft by Rakdos minions. She had spied Jace, and pointed him out. “It’s I-Go-By-Berrim!”
Jace made a show of conjuring a spell. His cloak whipped dramatically, and dark mystical smoke curled off his body as he intoned eldritch syllables. His eyes went black as coal, and he raised his crooked fingers from the ground to the sky, as if dragging up a great weight. The ground split, and great chunks of the street fell away into the hellish light below. Sulfurous fumes emanated from the crack, and a demonic bellow resounded.
“Ancient lord, I call you!” Jace screamed, and obsidian fire blazed from his hands into the sky.
To the amazement of the horde, a demonic monstrosity the size of a building climbed out of the fissure in the pavement. It had a great burning pitchfork and a regal rack of horns, and it breathed fire from its nostrils.
“Lord Rakdos, guide us!” Jace screamed. “Lead us! We do your will!”
The mighty demon stepped out of the fissure and toward the horde, back in the direction they had come: Rakdos guild territory. The Rakdos cultists roared with praise and delight, clearing out of the demon lord’s way, mesmerized by the street-shaking steps and its fiery weapon. The demon parted the horde, and the horde began to follow it in dark adoration.
“That is not Rakdos, you freaks!” called Exava, and from across the battle she shot Jace a chilling look.
Jace knew he was getting some of the details wrong. The massive illusion he was conjuring was a figment drawn from descriptions of the Rakdos leader, influenced by snippets of memories taken from Exava herself. He had never seen the demon guildmaster Rakdos in person—but he wagered that most of the Cult of Rakdos hadn’t, either. As he wove the illusion, he let other illusions of dark mystical energy curl around him for added effect. He had no power to summon demons nor mastery over diabolic magic; he was depending on the general ignorance of the Rakdos rank and file on that score as well.
Exava had seen through the trick, but she was having a hard time overcoming the awe it inspired in her horde. Jace could see her screaming at them, trying to shake their belief in the demonic delusion. But the only authority they respected over Exava was that of the eponymous Rakdos, and they followed it blindly.
The witch tried to lash out at Jace instead. She blasted out a series of pain spells, but he was ready for that tactic, and he countered and unraveled her spells before they could break his concentration. Jace ran forward into the crowd, crowing like an insane dark mage, following his towering illusion back toward the Rakdos-controlled part of the district. Once the Rakdos horde was dispersed in their own territory, perhaps he could face and defeat Exava one-on-one.
Ruric Thar and the other Gruul warriors could only nod in confused respect as he ran past.
ROUGH CROWDS
Jace guided his illusionary demon, and the demon guided the Rakdos horde, back through the quarter of the Rakdos guild. Meanwhile Jace fended off Exava in a personal side combat, her furious bolts of sadistic magic anticipated and deflected. His illusion flickered as the horde marched back toward the Rough Crowd, its credibility wavering.
As they rounded the corner, Jace gasped.
A Selesnya-guild army was assaulting a smattering of Rakdos irregulars. The Rough Crowd was gone, a splintered ruin, its oak beams unraveled by the magic of woodshapers and ripped asunder by huge nature elementals. Swarms of imps flooded out of the carcass of the nightclub, bombarding the streets below them with burning pitch, hitting their own Rakdos warriors as much as the Selesnya.
A contingent of Boros soldiers attacked from the Selesnya flank. A warrior angel screamed commands from the sky, hurling blasts of scorching light. Magic crackled back and forth between guildmages of opposing creeds, searing scars of battle into the cobblestones.
Jace and Emmara made eye contact, she from atop one of the vine-and-marble elementals, and he from down at street level with the Rakdos. They were both among armies they didn’t command but couldn’t ignore.
Jace’s illusion dissipated, but it seemed irrelevant now. Exava’s horde of Rakdos warriors merged with and reinforced the cultists from the Rough Crowd, and chaos reigned. Reinvigorated, the Rakdos surged against the Selesnya.
A pack of hellhounds, skinless and crackling with flames from inside their blackened ribcages, broke free of their Rakdos handlers and sprinted into a squad of Selesnya guildmages. Jace saw Emmara struggling to ply her magic, but the nature elementals didn’t respond to her, and the hellhounds crashed into the Selesnya mages. Jace could hear their screams over the din of battle.
Finally, whether under Emmara’s control or not, the elemental she rode reached down and smothered two of the mongrels with its fist, and grasped two more hellhounds with a mass of ropy green tendrils. It crushed their bodies into a nearby building façade, to a chorus of hellish howls.
Barbed grappling hooks seized onto the elemental, and Rakdos ogres and goblins pulled on the lines. The elemental’s center of gravity tipped, and more lines snagged onto its chest and arms. It angled into an agonizingly slow stumble. Emmara scrambled to maintain balance as it fell.
“Emmara!” Jace yelled, rushing to her through the crowd.
The elemental toppled, dashing against the street. The Rakdos mob swarmed on top of it with swords and axes, hacking it apart like mad lumberjacks. Jace lost sight of her, and couldn’t see whether she had landed safely, or was under attack by the Rakdos on the ground. But he stopped short before he got to her.
In his way stood the blood-witch, wielding two serrated swords and surrounded by a team of Rakdos toughs.
“It’s time to play, Berrim,” said Exava.
Emmara slid down the elemental’s back as it tumbled to the ground, and found herself surrounded by heavily-armed Rakdos lunatics. She tried to revive the shattered nature elemental with all the healing magic she could muster, but the cultists were thoroughly dismantling the great beast; it was only stomped foliage and smashed stones now.
The warriors moved in around her. One masked Rakdos ruffian stabbed at her with a barbed spear, but she grabbed the handle, disarmed him, cracked him on the skull with the blunt end, then spun it around and ran it through the guts of a second warrior. She elbowed the neck of a third and caused the armor of a fourth to bloom into a cage of constricting brambles. But she was outmatched. She leapt over one of her victims and darted through the crowd, trying to make it to Jace, to Trostani, to anyone she recognized.
When she finally broke free of the mass melee, she did see a familiar face. It was Calomir, flanked by his elite guards, seemingly waiting for her. They paused for a moment, combatants clashing behind her, aerial warriors flying overhead, screams of the dying ringing in the air.
“Calomir,” she said. “What have you done?”
Calomir’s voice was even and icy. “Guards, take this traitor back to the Conclave. Keep her secure.”
The Selesnya guards seized Emmara’s arms and
began dragging her away.
“What have I done, Calomir?” she snarled. “Have I been a voice of sanity during your warmongering? Have I tried to stop this war you’ve caused? Hundreds have died today because of you, and thousands more will come!”
Calomir said nothing more. She craned her neck to watch him stand there, a look of cold amusement on his face, as the guards brought her through the crowd.
His heart had gone insane, she concluded. Calomir had been her ally in peace, a guardian of the spirit of harmony of the Selesnya, and she had loved him for it. But now the man she loved had become possessed by a thirst for senseless war, and soldiers of her own guild, her extended family, had taken her into custody as a traitor. She felt bitterly alone.
She looked back at the battle receding behind her, to where she had seen another familiar face. “I need you,” she whispered.
Inside the sleeve of her robe, a delicate wooden broach blazed bright and warm against her skin. Its intricately carved veins burned for a moment, then faded, and it crumbled to ash.
Exava’s Rakdos minions were quick, too quick, and too strong. They snatched Jace and bound his arms, winding greasy rope around his wrists, laughing with stinking, hot breath into his ears. He slashed at their minds with psychic attacks, but they were already all insensate madmen; they had little consciousness for him to attack at all.
“Now then,” said Exava. “Shall we begin our game? You play by screaming as loud as you can, and I play by seeing if I can make it even louder.” Using the tip of one of her blades, she razored his tunic from neck to waist, exposing his bare chest. She grinned crookedly and touched the tip of the sword to his bare skin.
The words came to his mind like white fire, echoing with the image of Emmara’s face. I need you. He knew at once that Emmara had used the leaf. She was in danger, and he had to get to her.
He struggled to free his arms, but the Rakdos ruffians held him fast. One of them playfully bit his ear, reminding him how close he was to death—or something worse.
“Where do you think you’re going, I-Go-By-Berrim?” asked Exava. “We’ve just begun our game.”
Jace focused his mind on finding Emmara in the crowd. He launched out with his inner senses, scanning the battle for the characteristic contours of her mind. It was difficult with so many minds in the area, their thoughts intensified by the screaming pain of puncture wounds or the roar of bloodthirst, and his concentration was compromised by the sadistic Rakdos captors and would-be torturer before him. But a single thought, a single phrase, flared brightly for a moment, infused with bitter longing. He wrapped his mind around that phrase, and he followed it like a thread of spider silk, tracking it over the battlefield. It was thin, but he was able to use it to find his way to Emmara’s mind.
“I’m here,” he thought to her.
“Oh, Jace,” came the reply.
“I can’t come to you now, but I want you to listen to my voice. I’m staying with you. I’m not going to leave you.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“Are you ready?” Exava asked. “It’s your turn.” The blood-witch shoved the sword a half inch into his chest, and Jace yelled.
“Jace?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m here with you. Don’t worry.”
When they heard the shouts of all around them Jace went quiet and Exava withdrew her sword.
“Dragon!”
And then they followed the example of everyone else, and looked to the sky.
At first it seemed that Niv-Mizzet himself had appeared out of the clouds, churning the air with great flaps of his wings, his scales scintillating in the sunlight.
The battle froze as the shape of the dragon descended. But as all eyes turned to behold him, it became clear that it was the not the dragon himself, but a projection, a great simulacrum made of light, impressive to behold but without weight or substance.
Jace spied an Izzet mage positioned on the roof of a nearby building, holding up a small lens of brass and crystal in the direction of the image of Niv-Mizzet. In his other hand, the man held a crackling ball of lightning.
The combatants were unsure whether this was a sign to press on or to halt. The illusionary dragon drifted down as if making an actual landing, but set down his hind claws in the middle of the air, and folded his wings, nestling onto his nonexistent perch. The image hung there, floating over the battle.
“My guildmaster has a message for all the guilds of Ravnica,” called the mage from the nearby rooftop, holding steady the magical lens. “I and others of my guild carry his message to you all across the city. I bid you listen well.”
The projection of Niv-Mizzet swept his great head across the battlefield as most of the Selesnya faithful, Rakdos rioters, and other guilds paused their fighting, but a few of the fighters persisted. The great dragon breathed a sheet of fire that swept through the air above the battle. Though it was only a projection of fire, unable to ignite the buildings it touched, it crackled and roared like real fire. It had the desired effect. The battle stopped.
“Citizens of Ravnica,” the dragon boomed, as loud as if it had been in person. “I have an invitation for you. One I implore you to consider.”
Jace tilted his head. He heard an echo of the dragon’s words as he spoke them. He wondered how many Izzet mages were projecting this message around the city, and how many audiences were being terrified by Niv-Mizzets.
Silence draped the scene for a few more heartbeats, until a Rakdos warrior, twitching with bloodlust, screamed and ran her trident through a nearby Selesnya elf. The elf grunted in surprise, coughed blood, and slumped to the ground.
Other Rakdos warriors began to agitate again, raising their weapons to fight. From his rooftop, the Izzet mage pointed at the offending Rakdos warrior, and a bolt of blue lightning sizzled from the high ledge down across the battlefield. The warrior took the bolt full in the chest. She fell over dead next to her victim. The other Rakdos rioters stopped again.
“This great city of ours hides a deep secret,” the image of Niv-Mizzet went on. “My Izzet mages have discovered an ancient maze that runs throughout the district, whose purpose and power we have only now come to understand. It is an Implicit Maze, winding through and constructed of the very streets and tunnels of the district, and its path is unknown.”
Jace could hardly believe what he was hearing. The secret he had studied, that the Izzet had taken on as their covert project, that he had purged from his memory and laboriously recovered again—it was being broadcast to everyone, in public, by the Izzet guildmaster. But Jace noticed that Niv-Mizzet was carefully leaving out important details, such as the specific route to follow to solve the maze. Jace couldn’t fathom why the dragon would invite all the other guilds to undertake the same project that he and the Izzet had studied for so long.
“But we know that at its end lies great power,” said the dragon, “and that in order for it to be solved, all the guilds must participate at once.”
Murmuring swept through the crowd. The Niv-Mizzet-image spread his wings from his hovering perch, which directed their attention back to him.
“Each guild will send one champion as its delegate in the running of the maze. At the appointed time, our champions will meet at the Transguild Promenade, and embark on a race through the twists and turns of the maze. We shall see who triumphs, who gains the power behind it for their guild, and who falls to its dangers. Until then, I bid you prepare.”
The image of the dragon swept his great head around the battlefield, and Jace wondered whether the real Niv-Mizzet, back in his own aerie, was actually seeing everything that this and other images saw, or whether the dragon was practicing a kind of fearsome, illusionary pantomime. The illusion-dragon spread his wings and took off again, creating the noise of a savage whirlwind, but without actually disturbing the air, and then the illusion shimmered into nothing.
Jace noticed that the Izzet mage who had cast the
lightning spell looked directly at him for a moment before moving back from the ledge and disappearing.
With the dragon’s speech concluded, Exava turned back to Jace with a warped smile. “Well, that was quite interesting,” she began.
There was a thud as someone clubbed her across the head from behind. As she collapsed, Jace saw it was Captain Calomir.
“Greetings, Beleren,” he said.
Mages in midnight blue emerged out of nowhere, appearing behind the Rakdos ruffians and efficiently inserting long daggers into the base of the ruffians’ necks. The Rakdos cultists fell dead, and the newly-appearing mages took hold of Jace’s bound arms in turn. A blindfold came down over his face and was fastened behind his head.
“Calomir, wait,” he said.
“Let’s go somewhere where we can talk privately, shall we?” said Calomir, close to Jace’s ear. “Move.”
There was a shove at his back, and he walked. Somehow they walked down stairs that had not been there before, and somehow, within moments, he was being led through the cool, echoing dank of the undercity.
“Jace?”
“I’m here,” he thought to Emmara. “Don’t worry. I’m coming for you.”
UNMASKING
They walked Jace for what must have been several city blocks, down sloping tunnels and over creaking wooden footbridges. He could see nothing through the blackness of the blindfold, but he tried to keep his wits about him. For a while he tried to memorize the route they took, so if he escaped he could retrace his steps. But his Dimir captors led him in spirals, pushing him through shifting walls and over echoing watercourses, over unidentifiable surfaces designed to confuse the senses.
Finally they sat him on a wooden stool. When the blindfold was removed, Calomir stood before him in a misty undercity chamber, incongruous in the bright green and white of his Selesnya soldier’s dress.
