The Golgari’s complaints were subverbal, guttural. Ral thought he heard something that was almost a snarl.
“This kind of trespass would have been illegal under the Guildpact,” said the elf.
“Well, there’s no Guildpact now, is there? Run along. The dragon doesn’t like to wait for his discoveries.”
The elf shaman sneered again, but her face lowered, and she backed away. And with her, the rest of the Golgari retreated into the shadows. There was a final rattling sound as the shaman shook her rat-skull staff, then all was still.
Skreeg heaved a sigh into the silence. “Glad that’s over.”
Just as he said this, dark shapes jerked to life all around the Izzet expedition: skeletal remains shuddered to a standing position; heaps of refuse became fungal rot-horrors; decomposing moss wound with bits of bone to rise in multilegged form, uttering dark shrieks and brandishing claws of malice.
“Rot-dwelling sewer elves,” Ral cursed. He snapped his head to the other Izzet mages. “What are you waiting for? Destroy them!”
The Izzet rushed to conjure spells, but the Golgari refuse zombies sprang toward them with unnerving speed. The goblin Skreeg yelped as a zombie’s claws took hold of him and raised him toward a monstrous, devouring maw. Ral threw a bolt of lightning into the rotting creature, temporarily blasting it apart. Skreeg fell to the muck of the floor as the undead creature reassembled itself, inducing web-strewn remains to merge into its anatomy.
Ral grabbed the bronze cables from their experimental device and tried to use them as a weapon. He jabbed an undead horror with one, but the live cable barely singed its gray flesh. It would have stopped another creature’s heart, but of course the necromantic beast’s heart—if it even possessed one—was already stopped.
The zombie-things attacked in a swarm, cinching around the mages like a drawstring. Ral heard screams from his guild mates, and multiple tendrils began to lash onto his arms and neck.
“Hold on to something,” he said and jammed the mana cables directly into his gauntlet.
Ral’s eyelids began to flicker. A wind that had no source arose in the chamber, and all the hairs on Ral’s body stood on end. As zombified hands clamped onto him and began to drag his body toward the zombie horde, tiny arcs of storm energy crackled around his body. The air charged with hyperkinetic energies, and Ral felt himself float a few inches off the floor. He heard only the buzzing whine of power, like an overheating boiler. His vision went crackling white as he strained to absorb as much mana as he could. Like a newborn sun, every iota of Ral’s body exploded with power. All was noise and light, and then all was silence and darkness. He could hear nothing—see nothing.
Ral felt a strange pounding, and after a few moments he realized that it was his overcharged heart. In turn, he noted that he was breathing—evidence that he had somehow survived.
Someone lit a glow-lamp. Ral saw physical objects again, but through a thick fog. The scene appeared around him slowly. He realized that the chamber was a haze of dust and broken debris from the blast.
“Who’s hurt?” he coughed.
“I think we’re fine, sir,” said one Izzet mage, blackened and scorched but alive.
“Thanks to you,” said Skreeg, appearing out of the haze.
The Golgari undead were obliterated, having taken the brunt of the chaining energy surge. Pieces of brick dropped from the ceiling, exposing swaths of ancient masonry.
Ral felt more alive than he ever had before. His heart beat too fast, and he liked it.
“Skreeg,” said Ral. “The mana coils. Rev them up again. We’re finishing this experiment.”
“Sir?” said an Izzet researcher.
“What is it?”
The mage was looking up at the ceiling, at a bit of old stone exposed by the blast. “You’re going to want to have a look at this.”
Jace crept down the stairs to the main floor and approached the door. Kavin wouldn’t have knocked, and he didn’t expect any other visitors. He prepared a spell to sense the mind of whoever was outside. When he detected the thoughts of his old friend, he threw the door open wide.
Emmara looked as youthful as ever, but as she was an elf, her age tended not to show. She wore a white gown embroidered with a creeping ivy pattern that wound around her sleeves, branching into rich brown threading at the cuffs that resembled the roots of great trees. Jace knew she possessed a wisdom and quiet power that belied her youthful appearance.
“Good evening, old friend,” she said with a partial smile.
“Emmara! It’s been a while. Come in.”
As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Jace’s sanctum was not exactly fit for visitors. As soon as she stepped through the door, he had to guide her apologetically through the detritus of his research. He shoved some pieces of stonework out of the way and they sat down on the floor by an old, unused fireplace, where the threadbare carpet gave way to a wide hearth.
Emmara scanned the place. “You’ve taken up archaeology?”
“It’s a new project, I guess you could say. A colleague and I are studying patterns in old stonework. I’ve seen the same patterns used in dozens of different sites around the district. They’re geometric carvings with repeating elements. I’m fascinated. Did you know that almost every building on this street has stone sourced from the same salvage yard?”
“I didn’t.” Her face was placid, but from the way she clasped her hands in her lap, Jace knew this wasn’t a social call.
“What brings you from Ovitzia?”
“I live here now, in the Tenth,” said Emmara. She offered a small object to Jace, holding it delicately in her fingers: a wooden broach in the shape of an intricately-veined leaf. It was too detailed to have been carved even by a master artisan; it must have been molded by magic.
“What is this?”
“A gift. From my guildmaster.”
Jace took the fragile wooden leaf in two hands. “Guildmaster?” He glanced at the small tree-shaped pin at her shoulder. “You’ve joined a guild?”
“I’ve returned to one. The Selesnya Conclave. I was with the Conclave years ago—before you were born, in fact, human boy. And now that they’re rebuilding, they’ve summoned me back. You must have seen how the guilds have come back in force.”
“To be honest, I haven’t seen much beyond this building lately,” Jace said with a shrug. He realized that his hair was probably sticking out in every direction, and that Emmara had dramatically upped the cleanliness ante by her visit.
Emmara focused on him intently. “Jace, what do you know of the Guildpact?”
It was a delicate question. Jace had never been fully honest with Emmara—he had never told her he was a planeswalker, a mage capable of traveling between planes of existence. Most people had no idea there were planes beyond their own, and those who were bound to a single plane didn’t enjoy hearing that their familiar home was only one of a potentially infinite array of worlds.
Jace tended to keep his planeswalker nature a secret. That meant that sometimes Jace had to put on a bit of an act, to display enough knowledge that he could seem like a native, such as in conversations like this. He knew about the history of the city-world Ravnica only through what he had gleaned from his research—and from seeing into other people’s minds.
He considered trying to poke around in Emmara’s mind to see if he could learn more about the Guildpact. His magical specialty was a shortcut, but sometimes a necessary one. However, Emmara was a skilled mage in her own right and tended to be able to detect his mind magic when he used it around her.
“Politics was never my best subject,” he said.