Dragon's Maze

“I’m one of a few people able to traverse between planes. It’s called planeswalking, and it allows me to disappear from this world and travel to another one.”

“I don’t want to hear this. Stop.”

“It’s true, Emmara.”

“There are others like you? Who live here?” “You’re looking at one, my dear,” said Ral. He was almost purring.

Emmara’s face was hard, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Prove it.”

“I can’t,” said Jace. “There’s no one thing I can show you that will make you believe. I could planeswalk away from Ravnica and return later, but you won’t see it as much more than a disappearing act.”

“Then I don’t believe you. I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me, or why you’re trying to make a fool of me with your Izzet friend.”

“But it’s all true.”

“Stop it. It doesn’t make sense. Tell me one other place you’ve been.”

“I’ve been many places. Places very different from Ravnica. The details don’t matter. It’s only important that you understand that this is the truth about me.”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you making everything so hard?”

“Because it’s the truth, and because he’s right. If I didn’t tell you the truth, I’d be holding back. I’d be keeping a wedge between myself and Ravnica. Between myself and you.”

Jace reached out to her with his mind, to explain in thoughts what he was failing to in words. But he felt her rebuff him. Her thoughts became a wall, a refusal as tangible as a blow. He saw that she was shaking, but whether from fury, despondency, or cold, he couldn’t tell.

“Is it true?” she asked, and he saw that she was looking at Ral Zarek.

Zarek only raised his eyebrows, like two extra smiles.

“How long?” she asked, back at Jace. “How long have you kept these things from me?”

Jace couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. Her confusion had flared into fury. He just knew he had to tell her everything, to trust her with everything, or he would lose her. “As long as we’ve known each other. Since the beginning.”

There was a long moment, and then she said, “Rakdos, and then the Forum of Azor.” She didn’t ask it as a question, but she waited for confirmation.

His eyes widened, then he gave a barely perceptible nod.

She stalked toward the gate. “Take it down,” she said to Ral.

Ral smiled, and the lightning barrier that protected the gate split open in the middle, parting like a curtain.

“I’m coming with you,” said Jace.

“You do not follow me.”

“I know I’ve lied to you. I know it’s a betrayal. But there are reasons. Don’t go.”

Emmara turned and walked through, and the bars of lightning covered the arch again after she passed.

***

Ral Zarek clicked his tongue. “A shame,” he said. “But it’s best we not get too close to our planebound pawns, isn’t it?” He floated in the air, lightning crackling from his limbs and eyes. He looked like a thunderstorm taken human form. “We must focus on the true powers, and the true threats of our world—fellow planeswalkers. Savor this moment, Beleren, for now I rid the Multiverse of you.”

Jace drew from all his sources of mana, and poured all of his fury and shame into his magic. The rain lashed down on him, streaming down his body, and thunder crashed all around him. He felt none of it. His body trembled with power, and his cloak billowed in its own winds, which ignored the course of the storm.

“Listen to me very carefully,” said Jace, his voice audible over the thunder. “That woman is going to win this, and you’re not going to stop her.”

“Why should I need to stop her? She’s heading into the demon’s territory. I mean only to stop you.”

A bolt of lightning crashed from the storm to the ground, impacting just after Jace darted to one side, but the force of its shock wave blasted him from his feet.

Jace rolled and sprung up again. He threw back a barrage of mind-crushing spells, but Zarek had raised a battery of mental defenses, and Jace’s assault crashed through the psychic barricades like rocks through endless layers of thick glass. Zarek’s mind was all dazzling shards of countermagic and ingenuity and ferocious ambition. Jace forced his way through it, trying to find the man’s sensitive inner psyche, but his consciousness felt like a windswept kite.

Zarek lashed into Jace with gusts of wind-spiked rain, knocking him back step by step. Then he clapped his hands together, and an explosion of thunder knocked Jace into a back flip and onto the pavement.

Jace crashed into the puddles. He spun away from another sizzling torrent of lightning, and fired back another volley of intrusive thoughts into Zarek’s mind, but only broke more of the never-ending mind barriers. He was making no headway, and meanwhile he was spending a lot of his strength on useless attacks.

Zarek had been prepared for this. He had been waiting for Jace to come through the Izzet gate and face him, with full knowledge of Jace’s abilities. Zarek would let Jace exhaust himself with as many mind-puncturing attempts as he wanted, and then would no doubt finish him off with a sky-shattering bolt of lightning.