War of the Spark, page 10
Chandra was about to protest. She wasn’t going to burn down the world-tree.
Okay, yeah, maybe a few branches will get singed, but the drakes are doing that anyway—
Something stopped her from speaking. She couldn’t put her finger on what exactly, but it felt…familiar. Instinctively, she looked up, looked around. Standing on a balcony, across a green swath from Vitu-Ghazi, was a tiny figure—a small woman—surrounded by swirling green magic. No, bursting with green magic. She was unmistakably Nissa Revane.
Nissa’s power manifested as a green cyclone, which swirled away from her, spinning not toward the Eternals, but toward Vitu-Ghazi. The world-tree seemed to suck the cyclone in—and then the world-tree started to move. Roots ripped free of the ground, dislodging the Eternals hacking away at them; the Dreadhorde now seemed like tiny fleas as the tree rose and stood erect. Branches became arms and hands. Trunks and roots became massive and powerful legs as Vitu-Ghazi took its first steps. The sacred tree had become a living, walking and stomping elemental, over a hundred feet tall, with buildings and archways still attached, looking and acting like armor for this new gargantuan guardian that had entered the fray and was fast triumphing.
Makare and those around her were crushed underfoot. Drakes were slapped out of the sky into shattered fragments of lazotep by immense hands of ancient wood.
Boruvo and Lavinia cheered (even though Lavinia was hardly the cheering type) as Vitu-Ghazi stepped forward to crush every Eternal in her path while effortlessly flicking off any Eternal still clinging to her roots and trunk. And it was soon clear that the great elemental had only just begun its march. It strode forward toward the city center, toward the Eternal army, toward Bolas himself.
But Chandra barely noticed the towering elemental, or the chaos in its wake. Nissa Revane was her entire panorama. Chandra’s eyes filled with tears, though she was already burning so hot that the tears instantly turned to steam. She watched rapt as Nissa descended, leaping lithely from balcony to terrace to balcony until she stood among them.
Boruvo and even Jaya Ballard stood in awe of her—or at least of her accomplishment.
Lavinia greeted her.
Nissa didn’t reply. She looked at Chandra. Chandra looked at Nissa. Chandra swallowed. Nissa managed an embarrassed smile. Neither spoke a word.
Ral knew what he should be doing. He should be helping Kaya and the new kid Teyo fight Eternals or rally Planeswalkers or some such. Instead, when he had told Kaya what he wanted—needed—to do, she had simply nodded and said, “Go.”
It soothed his conscience only a little that before taking off, he had at least remembered to order Chamberlain Maree to lead the Izzet League into battle against the Dreadhorde. But the truth was that if anyone should be leading Izzet forces into battle, it should be their new guildmaster. By choosing to run a personal errand instead, he wasn’t exactly demonstrating stellar leadership skills.
He didn’t care. Tomik filled his every thought.
He ran a hand through his silver hair and checked his Accumulator. It was down to forty-six percent. There hadn’t been a chance to recharge. He thought of summoning another lightning storm—but had neither the time nor the mystic stamina to manage it right now.
He spotted another Eternal. A platoon or phalanx or crop or whatever the bloody hell they called themselves, assuming the undead automatons bothered to call themselves anything, had split up and scattered throughout Dogsrun to kill any living soul they could find in the district.
“Hey, you!” he called out.
The Eternal turned and instantly rushed him, two axes held high to strike. He reached out his arms, his hair stood on end, and he blasted her with lightning. It felt immensely satisfying to watch her spasm, sizzle and fry.
But that was stupid. You could’ve taken her out with half the juice. You need to conserve.
He checked his stores again: Forty-two percent.
Idiot.
He was making his way to the apartment he shared with Tomik Vrona. They had chosen a place in Dogsrun because it was a backwater area just beginning to improve: nice but not so nice as to draw attention, and outside both Izzet and Orzhov territory, where they’d be less likely to be seen together by anyone in their respective guilds. He needn’t have worried. Their “secret” apartment was apparently the worst-kept secret in all of Ravnica. Which only increased his fears now. Bolas knew of the place. And the dragon couldn’t be happy that Ral had abandoned his service. If Bolas struck at Ral through Tomik…
There was another Eternal. This time, Ral controlled himself, using a precision strike to blow off the creature’s head. It collapsed, jerking, then stilled.
He checked again: Forty-one percent.
At least I’m losing the battle at a slower pace.
A guildmage of the Izzet had no business falling in love with the personal assistant to the heir of the Orzhov. And Ral had denied for as long as he could manage that love had anything to do with his relationship to Tomik. But he was past that. There was no point in maintaining that convenient fantasy. The truth was simply this: No one in his life had ever mattered to Ral as much as Tomik did now.
A block away from his destination, he turned a corner and found yet another Eternal murdering a young woman, while two male friends cowered and watched and did nothing but whimper her name: “Emmy, Emmy. No, Emmy.” He blasted the Eternal and rushed past her friends, growling, “Get off the street, you idiots.”
He checked: Thirty-nine percent.
A dozen or so Eternals were coming down the lane in the other direction. Too many to mess around with. He spread his arms wide and fired simultaneously at the Eternals on the far left and the far right. He was lucky lazotep was such a good conductor. With a little effort, he created a circuit between himself and the dozen. They squirmed and jerked like butterflies pinned to a wall until he shut the electricity off, and as one they dropped to the cobblestones, smoking.
Thirty-four percent.
He was at the front door, was actually reaching for the handle, when he heard the shriek. He whipped about and spotted an eternalized angel descending toward him from above.
He fired.
He missed.
He barely dodged out of the way. Rolling, he came to a stop, face up.
Thirty-three percent.
He felt like an overturned tortoise. The Accumulator on his back was as light as he could engineer it to be. Which meant it wasn’t any heavier than it had to be. Which meant it was still damn heavy. He was used to it, had trained with it, had fought multiple battles with it, but that didn’t make it any easier to recover and roll and make ready to fire again.
He managed it.
The angel descended, wearing bronze talons over its knuckles.
Ral fired again.
Missed again.
Dodged again—but not quite quickly enough. The talons of the angel’s right hand shredded his leather jacket and sliced shallow gashes into his shoulder. He inhaled with a hiss—and hoped that the talons hadn’t been dipped in poison.
Thirty-two percent.
The angel was swooping around for another assault. Ral spread his arms, winced and chanted softly through the pain.
He generated a virtual net of crisscrossing electricity in the air.
The angel barrel-rolled away from it, accelerated straight up and dived down on Ral’s side of the net.
Twenty-seven percent.
Ral jerked his fists back toward his chest, and the lightning-net sped toward him—only slightly faster than the dread angel.
It entangled the angel’s lazotep-coated wings, and the thing was done for—which didn’t exactly stop it from plowing into Ral as it thrashed and died.
It was a damned good thing Ral was immune to his own electricity, as the creature took a good thirty seconds to fry. And as Ral wasn’t immune to the heat its death was generating, he screamed as the red-hot Eternal burned through his jacket, tunic and a good percentage of his pants.
He pushed its husk off him.
Twenty-one percent.
He got to his feet as quickly as he could manage. What remaned of his clothes were in scorched tatters, and patches of his skin could use a good healing spell. But none of that mattered now.
He looked around for any more lingering Eternals and, seeing none, grabbed the door handle and entered the building.
He rushed upstairs to find Tomik, to take him in his arms.
But when he reached their apartment…he found it empty.
For whatever reason, the Eternals had—as far as Kaya could tell—not yet chosen to enter any buildings. Phalanxes and crops of the Dreadhorde were scouring Ravnican streets, but the citizenry was at least temporarily safe if they remained indoors. It was hardly a scenario that could be counted on to continue. It wasn’t exactly a Bolas trait to knock first before creating mayhem. But the Planeswalkers would happily take whatever slight respite they could get for as long as it would last.
Thus Kaya, Teyo and Rat were fighting Eternals as they made their way through the streets, byways and alleys of the city—saving bystanders as they went. But it was easy enough to tell those rescued to find shelter somewhere, anywhere. The trio could then move on without much further concern for those left behind. Moreover, they never had to venture inside themselves, which was a small blessing. Going house-to-house, building-to-building, would have been much more dangerous and time consuming.
They were making their way toward the Orzhova, the Cathedral Opulent, to summon the forces of the Orzhov Syndicate into battle against the enemy. Since there were only three of them—and since Teyo’s abilities were largely (well, almost entirely) defensive—they tried to avoid the larger contingents. But their success rate against individual Eternals or small crops was fairly spectacular.
Kaya did most of the heavy lifting when it came to the actual killing of these creatures. They seemed particularly vulnerable to her ghost daggers. And they couldn’t touch her when she was incorporeal. She had to pay careful attention, of course; there was always the risk that while she was killing one, another might find its moment, but being careful was nothing new to the ghost-assassin. Neither was slaying the undead. Plus Teyo was there, watching her back.
He claimed to be a novice shieldmage, and the boy was clearly operating at the point of near-exhaustion, but he did his part, protecting their backs, their fronts, their sides. He was quick and smart and if the situation weren’t half so desperate, Kaya might have been amused at the way he was constantly surprised by his own rapidly growing skills.
And Rat was no slouch. She was small and quick.
Basically well named.
And she was talented with her own two daggers. She’d wait for her moment, then duck out from behind one of Teyo’s diamond-shaped shields, dodge two or three Eternals and then stab one that hadn’t seen her coming, plunging both daggers into the Eternal’s eyes, deep into its brain. The creature would fall instantly, and Rat would race away before another of the Eternals even reacted to her presence.
During a brief respite, as they crossed a wide but empty thoroughfare—empty of everything but a handful of corpses that showed the Eternals had already made their presence known here—Teyo turned to Kaya and asked, “So are we Gatewatch now?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Never heard of ‘Gatewatch’ before today. Not entirely clear what it is.”
Rat said, “The good guys, I think.”
Teyo nodded. “Ravnica’s equivalent to the Shieldmage Order.”
Kaya shook her head. “I don’t think they’re limited to Ravnica. All the members are Planeswalkers. Perhaps they’re the Multiverse’s equivalent of your Order.”
Rat shrugged. “So…the good guys.”
“Yes.”
“Then I think both of you are Gatewatch,” Rat said. “Not me, of course. I’m not a ’walker.” A thought seemed to strike the young girl, and she laughed, saying, “I’m not Gatewatch; I’m Gateless. That’s the Rat. Always Gateless.”
“You’ve killed more Eternals than I have,” Teyo said.
“That’s such a sweet thing to say, Teyo. You’re such a sweet boy. Isn’t he a sweet boy, Mistress Kaya?”
“Very sweet,” Kaya said while scanning for the next crop or phalanx.
Teyo frowned slightly, saying to Rat, “I’m pretty sure I’m older than you.”
She ignored him. “That’s why I adopted him first thing.”
“I—”
She turned back to cut him off. “How’s that cut? I can’t even see a scar.”
Thrown by her rapid changes of subject, Teyo rubbed his head where the cut used to be. “Fine, I guess. I can’t feel it at all.”
“It was nice of Mr. Goldmane to heal it for you. It’s not like he wasn’t busy with other things, what with all the Eternals he was killing left and right. Wasn’t it nice of Mr. Goldmane, Mistress Kaya?”
“Very nice,” Kaya said while nodding absently, thinking about how exactly she might convince the Orzhov to join the fight. She had already seen Maree lead the Izzet into the field, fighting side by side with bio-warriors of the Simic Combine, under the command of a merfolk hybrid named Vorel. It was a rare moment of unity between guilds. And it was a pleasant surprise to see the Simic step out from behind their walls of isolation to help.
Now if only I can get my own guild to do as much.
She was dubious about her chance of success but realized there was no chance at all if she didn’t get to Orzhova.
She could now see the spiky spires and the (literally) flying buttresses of the Cathedral Opulent looming above other closer, shorter structures. Anxious to finally get there, Kaya raced down a side street—practically an alley—that seemed a more direct route, running diagonally between two tall buildings. Rat grabbed Teyo’s hand and followed.
A hundred yards in, Rat said, “I don’t think we want to go this way.”
“We do if it’ll get us to the Orzhova faster.”
“It’s a dead end.”
Kaya stopped short. She turned to face Rat and said, “You might have mentioned that sooner.”
“You looked so confident. I thought maybe you knew about a secret passage. I mean there are a lot of secret passages through Ravnica. A lot. And I pretty much know all of them—or most of them, anyway. But I figured that Guildmaster Kaya might know one or two I don’t, right?”
“Rat, I’ve been guildmaster for a matter of weeks. I’ve only been on Ravnica for a matter of months. I barely know this city any better than Teyo here.”
“I only arrived this morning,” Teyo said rather needlessly.
“I know that,” Kaya growled.
Rat’s head bobbed. “Right, right. So from now on, the native navigates. This way.”
Still holding Teyo’s hand, she pulled him back the way they came. He let himself be dragged away. Kaya followed, feeling both angry and silly at the same time.
Why was I in the lead?
“Okay,” Rat said, “maybe back the other way.”
“Why?” Kaya asked a split second before she knew the reason. A crop of Eternals was entering the mouth of the alley twenty feet ahead. Too many for them to fight in this enclosed space. The creatures spotted the trio and instantly charged after them. Kaya, Rat and Teyo turned and ran.
Kaya shouted, “You said this was a dead end!”
“It is!”
“Then where are we running to?”
“There’s a door to a speakeasy at the end of the alley. It won’t get us to the cathedral, but if we get inside maybe the creepies will forget about us.”
It seemed as good a solution as any.
The Eternals were fast, but they weren’t running for their lives. Rat, Teyo and Kaya beat them to the end of the alley and the heavy iron door. Finally releasing Teyo’s hand, Rat tried the door handle. It was locked. She banged on the portal with both fists. There was no answer. She knelt and said, “It’s okay. I can pick the lock.”
“So can I,” Kaya said, staring at the advancing Eternals, “but I don’t think there’s time.”
“I’ll buy the time,” Teyo stated. He began chanting and formed a largish diamond shield of white light to separate them from their pursuers mere seconds before the crush of Eternals smashed into it. Teyo grunted painfully but maintained the shield, even expanded it into a rectangle that spanned the width of the alleyway so that none of the creatures could slip around it.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Rat said over her shoulder while working the lock.
“Neither did I. Never done it before. But I can use the alley walls to substitute for the geometry. It’s like leaning in.”
“If you say so.”
He didn’t respond. Kaya was close enough to see the beads of perspiration forming on the boy’s forehead and cheeks. He chanted under his breath, his lips stretched tight and nearly white. The Eternals slammed their weapons against his shield relentlessly, and he seemed to feel every blow. She wondered how long he could hold out under the strain.
Something clicked softly. “Got it,” Rat said, standing. She grabbed the door handle. It still wouldn’t budge. “It’s unlocked! Must be bolted from the inside!”
“Leave it to me,” Kaya said. She ghosted through the door.
But on the other side, the news wasn’t good. A heavy iron bar had been placed across the door—with large padlocks at either end. Kaya was fairly confident she could pick both locks—but not necessarily fast enough to get the two kids inside before Teyo’s shield failed.
I could leave them behind.
She barely knew either of them. She hadn’t known they existed before today. Kaya was an assassin and a Planeswalker, constantly on the move, constantly leaving people, even worlds, behind. She wasn’t exactly the type to make lasting bonds. Friends, she well knew, were a liability in her line of work.
I should leave them behind.
But I won’t.
She ghosted her head back through the door and said, “I’ll get it open, but you need to hold out a bit longer.”
Teyo, eyes squinched shut, nodded once but said nothing. He was no longer chanting. Just gritting his teeth and leaning toward his shield with both hands, as a lazotep minotaur head-butted it over and over, while the rest of the Eternals smashed maces against it or the butts of their sickle-shaped swords. White light flashed at every impact. It wasn’t going to hold.
