Dragon's Maze

Jace and Emmara’s grip was tested as the longlegs clambered over a snarl of halted traffic. The creature was perfectly adapted to navigating Ravnica’s streets, able to keep three limbs on the ground as two or three more selected new footing a thirty-foot stride away. But it was not designed for traveling luxury. As the creature’s body lurched, Jace and Emmara lurched with it, and the momentum tested their grip. Jace lost his grasp with his legs and swung free from his arms. Emmara let go with one of her hands and grabbed his cloak, in case he fell, but she lost stability in the process, and she let out an involuntary grunt as his weight yanked on her.

Jace clung with his hands, his feet dangling two stories over the street traffic, watching the back of Varolz as he ran ahead, hoping he would not turn around to see them.

“Can you grab my leg?” Jace thought.

“How did I let you talk me into this?”

As Jace hung with his leg hooked into the stilt-walker’s straps, they approached their next destination.

The Selesnya guildgate was built into a massive wall of white marble hung with curtains of soft-leafed ivy. The archway of the gate rose high enough for a nature elemental to pass through it, and so the Golgari longlegs would have no trouble fitting through. But as soon as they crossed into Selesnya territory, archers appeared along the top of the gate. Arrows whistled.

The Golgari creature screeched, bristling with feather-fletched arrow shafts, and lurched sideways, its knees crumpling. It ricocheted against the side of the arch and fell from its feet, sending Jace, Emmara, and the Golgari elves tumbling. Jace crashed to the ground, but scrambled to his feet. He could see the archers—but something was strange about them. They weren’t in Selesnya uniform. They were of the Simic guild—this was a Simic ambush.

Jace looked up to see Emmara rolling to a halt, facing up at the Simic maze-runner, Vorel.

“Elf,” said Vorel, looking down at Emmara. “An antique specimen. Unmodified. Unevolved. Soon to be obsolete.”

Vorel’s familiar, the enormous crab-beast, pinned her to the ground with a heavy pincer, and Jace heard the hiss of her breath escaping her chest.

“Leave her,” Jace warned, conjuring a spell.

Vorel looked at him. “Human. Unmodified. More untapped potential.”

Jace looked around for some kind of Selesnya force to help. There was no sign of the Selesnya here. It was as Emmara had described—they had abandoned her. They weren’t even participating enough to guard their own gate.

The Simic runner Vorel crouched down to Emmara, tilting his head as if studying an odd insect. “Your life does not fit the Simic vision of the future.” He pressed on the crab’s pincer, pushing it into Emmara’s sternum.

Suddenly, a ring of swords surrounded Vorel. Selesnya soldiers had appeared, encircling the Simic delegation. Even the crab creature had a team of stern-looking Selesnya guards around it.

“Release her,” said one of the soldiers.

Vorel looked down the line of one of the blades, down to the prone form of Emmara. His head shook in a moment of reevaluation. “Let us go,” he said, and the crab-beast disengaged.

Emmara took a breath.

The Selesnya soldiers didn’t touch Vorel or his entourage. They backed away and let the Simic delegation through. Vorel climbed onto the crab-thing’s back and they rode off through Selesnya territory toward the next gate.

When they had gone, Jace exhaled. Emmara stood on her feet and looked around. “Thank you,” she said to the soldiers around her. “That meant a lot to me.”

“Emmara, I’m sorry,” said Jace.

“For what?”

Jace dropped his spell, and the Selesnya soldiers dissolved, unraveling into threads of azure light, and disappeared.

Emmara sighed in disappointment. “Illusions. You conjured an illusionary army.”

“It was all I could think of to drive off the Simic,” said

Jace.

“For a moment there I thought you had changed the minds of everyone in the Selesnya Conclave,” said Emmara.

“Considered it,” said Jace, half under his breath.

Emmara gathered herself and brushed foliage off her robe. She gave Jace a look. “What’s it like to be you, Jace? To be able to do what you do? What are your limits?”

Jace let his hood fall across his face. “No one can ever know.” He could feel that she wanted to reach out to him, to connect with him, but he turned back toward the maze path. If she knew what he was capable of, if she knew his true nature, she would never trust him again.

“What does that mean? Do you hide something from me?” Emmara’s voice was playful, but her questions were serious. “What are the secrets of Jace Beleren?”

“We should go. The Golgari await.”

***

Jace had been here before. It was Varolz’s lair, or his hunting grounds. The gate was a stone archway deep underground, covered in iridescent moss and crawling with beetles. The way the path was laid out, they had to cross a long, decaying stone bridge to reach the Golgari gate.