Kaladesh

Collected Stories

Compiled by J. Kreines

Contents

1. Homesick

2. A Time for Innovation

3. Torch of Defiance

4. Renegade Prime

5. Born of Aether

6. Bottled Up

7. Release

8. In this Very Arena

9. A Grateful Consulate

KALADESH: COLLECTED STORIES

© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Manufactured by: Hasbro SA, Rue Emile-Boéchat 31, 2800 Delémont, CH. Represented by Hasbro Europe, 2 Roundwood Ave, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB11 1AZ, UK.

Kaladesh, its logo, Magic: The Gathering, and Wizards of the Coast, and the planeswalker symbol are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC, in the U.S.A. and other countries.

All Wizards of the Coast characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Cover art by Adam Willson

First Printing: October 2016

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B0000012677 EN

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1

Homesick

By Chris L’Etoile

Five Planeswalkers allied as the Gatewatch. From Kaladesh, the pyromancer Chandra Nalaar. From Theros, the hieromancer Gideon Jura. From Zendikar, the elven animist Nissa Revane. From someplace he no longer remembers, the telepath Jace Beleren. From Dominaria, the necromancer Liliana Vess. With the aid of Tamiyo, a soratami scholar of Kamigawa, they defeated the eldritch titan Emrakul, sealing the entity within Innistrad's silver moon.

Three months have passed.

* * *

She knocked again, louder.

From the far side of the door came a thump and a muttered obscenity. After long seconds of fabric rustling this way and that, accompanied by sotto voce imprecations against these blankets in particular, bedding in general, and the entire profession of weaving by extension, the sounds of unsteady feet on hardwood lurched and swayed towards the door.

"Yeah. What. What?" a sleep-thick feminine voice mumbled from the other side.

"It's almost noon. You need to get up."

"Can't be noon. It's still too heavy out."

"Could you open the door?"

"No." A moment of silence, a sigh, then long seconds of loose-limbed scrabbling against the door lock. A final pause. "Wait. Didn't lock it. You open it."

She pushed gently, and the door creaked open, the movement of air rustling the dark silk of her dress. The woman collapsing against the doorframe on the far side was a chin-level explosion of sleep-mussed copper hair in a baggy nightshirt, its neckline untied and sliding off one shoulder. The light from the hall fell across one sunburnt and freckled cheek. She groaned and squeezed amber eyes shut. "Morning, Liliana," she mumbled into the door frame.

"Oh my," Liliana said. "You look terrible, Chandra."

Chandra smeared night sand out of one eye with the hand she wasn't leaning on. "Oh yeah? Well you look..." She dropped her hand and squinted at her blearily. Her eyelid twitched. "...Great, actually." There was a definite unspoken "damn it" at the end of the sentence.

"Why, thank you."

The only light beyond Chandra's shoulder was a sliver of blinding sun slicing between the heavy folds of drawn curtains. The bedroom seemed to have been ransacked by hasty goblins. Or possibly a bear had taken up residence. The blankets on the four-post bed were pulled off and trailing across the lacquered hardwood, leaving behind only a shambling fortress-pile of overstuffed pillows in the center of the mattress.

The desk was covered with dried-out paint bottles in several lurid colors, and one oversized, half-eaten cookie. There were piles of wadded-up clothes in two different corners. In the gloom, Liliana couldn't tell which was the clean pile. Assuming either was. In a third corner lay the charred remnants of at least two easels.

"I trust the evening was worth it?" Liliana asked. A breeze kicked through the hall, carrying the scents of sun-baked bricks and frying food, the susurration of crowds and the tinkling of bands in the square below. A strand of wayward orange hair wavered in the summer wind and fell across Chandra's eye. Liliana reached out and tucked it behind the girl's ear, tsking. It was dry as straw, the ends split. To be expected, perhaps, given its tendency to burst into flame.

"Stop that," Chandra said, waving away her hands. "I wasn't doing anything last night. Just went to watch..." she hesitated, amber eyes squinting off into the gloom of her bedroom. "Uh, some minstrels. Yeah. A tavern in—on Tin Street. They had, like...fiddles."

Liliana had met many terrible liars over the centuries, but impressively few could rival Chandra. She folded her arms across her chest and allowed one corner of her mouth to tilt upwards. "You went to see the Izzet air races."

"No!...Yes." She yawned. "So you gonna yell at me, or what?"

She laughed lightly. "Why on earth should I? Do what you want." She waved over her shoulder, the gesture encompassing the sun-baked hall, the quiet, book-stacked rooms of Jace's sanctum, and the preposterous band of freelance do-gooders she'd found herself walking two steps behind and shaking her head at. "Nobody here has a right to tell you what to do. That's certainly not what I signed up for."

"You didn't sign anything."

"Never do, sweetie. Best to live unfettered." She tapped a finger against her lips. "Air races are dangerous for most. But after Emrakul, the perils of goblins with rockets strapped to their backs seems distinctly...non-perilous for you."

Art by Svetlin Velinov

"One of them had rockets in his boots. But he blew up. Boof!" Chandra's hands cupped and spread apart, describing an expanding cloud of yuck. "Chunks everywhere. Super gross."

"Charming. Did you enjoy your evening?"

The younger woman grinned, the freckles on her cheeks scrunching up into an adorable mess. "Yeah! I love air races. I haven't seen once since—" her mouth hung a moment, and she blinked twice, rapidly. "Not for a while, anyways. Not big with the monks," she said, with an unconvincing laugh.

Liliana studied the fall of the noon sun across Chandra's hair, remembering the brittle feel of it between her fingers. "Beefslab wants everyone downstairs in an hour. We have a guest."

"Who?"

"I'm sure I didn't ask."

"What? No, I mean...Beefslab?"

Liliana let the corner of her mouth slide up again, placed one hand on her hip, and waited for it.

"Oh!" Chandra snorted a laugh. "Gids."

She waved pale fingers in the air and rolled her eyes, theatrically. "Surely you've thought the same? It feels like I have to ask him to put a shirt on every other day."

Chandra rubbed her left eye and yawned again. "Hey, I don't mind the view. I wanna get breakfast on the way. Lunch. Whatever. You coming with?"

She moved to brush past Liliana, who stopped her with a hand to her exposed shoulder. The skin was radiantly, unnaturally warm, as if she'd been lying in the sun. She'd noticed that on the rare occasions Chandra sat still for five minutes, her lap inevitably attracted a small pile of drowsy cats.

"Before we go downstairs, sweetie," she said, "you might wish to put on pants."

"What are you, my m—aunt?" Chandra grumped. She turned and wobbled toward one of the piles of laundry, toes curling up at the cold of the hardwood. That settled the question of which pile was the clean. Hopefully.

Liliana silvered a laugh into the air. "I'd rather you think of me as...a sibling, shall we say?"

Chandra pulled a pair of leggings out of the pile, sniffed, and tossed them over her shoulder with a grimace. "I don't have any siblings. Anyways, aren't you like two hundred or something?"

"Ah, but two hundred going on twenty-nine."

* * *

"Not wearing armor today?" Liliana asked as they walked to the stairs.

"Around the house? Nah. You think maybe I should for this meeting?" Chandra was looking down at the lacing of her shirt. She'd been trying to work out a knot, but only managed to get a thumb caught. "I left it downstairs, in that room Jace keeps all his cloaks." A puzzled frown bent her lips. "He's got an awful lot of them. Hold on."

She paused by one of the open bedroom doors to work her thumb free. It was Nissa's room, theoretically. The curtains were pulled wide, letting noontime sun fall on undisturbed bedding and a dusty bureau. Chandra glanced in. "We've been here like three months, but I've barely seen Nissa since Innistrad."

"You won't find her in there. Let me see that." Liliana turned and batted Chandra's free hand away from her shirt's lacing. The other hand was now connected by the thumb and an additional finger. "The first morning you all were here, she stumbled out looking like death warmed over."

Chandra brightened and opened her mouth.

"Yes, yes," Liliana sighed. "I'd know best what that looks like."

"Aw..."

"Sweet girl, trust me. I have heard all the necromancer jokes." Liliana sucked in her lower lip as she dug in her fingernail to tease a knot free. "Nissa mumbled something like, 'Can't sleep. Too many angles.' She's been staying in the roof garden ever since."

"Weird." Chandra watched dust motes swirl in the air. "What about you?"

"What about me?" Liliana pulled at another knot.

With her free hand, Chandra pushed her goggles further back on her forehead. "Jace offered you a room too. Right? Like the rest of us? But you went and got your own place, even when everything's so expensive here."

A final, firm tug, and Chandra's hand was free. "I mislike relying on the mercy of others," Liliana said, forcing lightness into her voice. It had the virtue of being true, if not the entire truth. "Now let me tie this for you properly."

Sleeping under a roof that Jace paid for? Not just "no," but "hell no."

"There." She patted the lacing on Chandra's shirt. "Don't touch it again. Next time you'll probably get a toe caught."

"Thanks," Chandra grinned, then wrapped one warm arm up around Liliana's bare shoulders and squeezed. "I'm so hungry I could eat an Eldrazi. Maybe even one of the gooey ones." She launched herself toward the stairs. "They don't get breakfast on Ravnica at all. It's like they get it all backwards. Big dinners, long lunches, skipped breakfasts. Crusty bread with butter? For breakfast?" Chandra made a lemon-pucker face. "Come the hell on."

"Is that why you can't get up in the morning here?" Liliana asked, mildly.

Chandra slugged her in the arm. "Jerk." She was taken so off guard she staggered. Chandra walked obliviously ahead as Liliana rubbed the potential bruise. Her steps quickened as she warmed to her topic and gestured to an audience only she could see. "Listen. A real breakfast starts with methi thepla. With ginger, chilis, and some yogurt in the mix. When you wake up to that smell—" she paused; swallowed; shook her head. "With pickled mango! Mango is the best. Anyone who says otherwise should be pitied for their tragic and inescapable wrongness."

Liliana shook her head. "I have no idea what mango is."

"A fruit." Chandra said. "Nothing else tastes like it in the multiverse. At least in the parts I've been. When it's perfectly ripe and you take a bite..." she cupped both hands under her mouth. "...the juice just runs down your chin. Sweet and tangy at the same time—and sharp in the back of your nose. Like the way juniper smells, a little. They're like a sunrise in your mouth. So big and bright it spills out."

"They sound...messy," Liliana allowed.

"I guess. Sometimes. But so worth it," Chandra grinned. "For the second course, do you know what a chickpea—oh." They had turned into a hall that opened over a courtyard on one side, open to the sky and brimming over with green. Chandra's forward momentum trickled to a halt as she drifted toward the balustrade.

"We've got time for one more go before the meeting. Whenever you're ready." The booming voice of Gideon. "Let's do this!" An echoing clap of meaty hands.

She moved to stand beside Chandra. Below, Mancake settled into what was probably a Theros wrestling stance, braced as if expecting a blow. Across from him, the willowy Zendikari elf stood with one hand gripping her opposing shoulder, looking like she wanted to fold into herself and disappear.

"Are you sure?" she asked the grass. Her voice was uneven, scratchy with disuse.

His laugh echoed off the stonework. Liliana was fairly certain she heard distant glassware vibrating. "If I know it's coming, I'm indestructible. The whole point's to see how far you can go. Trust yourself, Nissa. And if you don't...trust me. I can absolutely take it."

"But..."

"Indestructible," he repeated cheerfully, flashing perfect teeth.

"All right." Nissa closed her pine-shadow eyes. "There's not much here to work with."

"We could do this in the garden."

"I meant...never mind." She breathed in, and raised a hand.

The bushes exploded into bloom. Lavender-and-white petals swirled on a sudden wind, filling the air with thick sweetness. Ivy shot up the walls, emerald leaves swelling and unfurling, coating every surface. The grass stretched and bent, whispering in the breeze, lovingly wrapping itself around Nissa's hiking boots.

Chandra took an involuntary step back, inhaling sharply as greenery embraced the balustrade.

Branches swelled and twined, weaving into a single four-legged shape. Maybe some Zendikari beast? Liliana had visited some decades before, but found the place too dull to stay long. The bushes pulled themselves free of the ground, flicking dirt from their root-feet like a fastidious cat.

The bush-beast—more a tree now—reared back, creaking and groaning like the world's largest rocking chair. It shed pastel petals in a constant rain, motes of pollen swirling in the noontime sun. Its front limbs interlaced into a single fist, which it drove down on Gideon like an avalanche.

His flesh shone with liquid gold.

Then he was driven down into the earth, up to his chest.

Nissa gasped. With a wave of her hand, the tree-beast jumped back away from him, landing with a reverberating impact that left Liliana clutching the ivy-clad railing for support. Somewhere in the house, she heard porcelain shatter. Several somewheres, actually.

Gideon laughed uproariously. "That was incredible!" He braced his hands on either side of the crater, and with a grunt uprooted himself. He rolled up on to his feet and brushed black earth off his trousers, a grin lighting his face. "You can't hurt me, but I didn't even think about the floor."

The tree-beast keened at Nissa like a scolded puppy. "Shh," the elf whispered, bending to rest her forehead against the monster's wooden brow. "My fault, my fault."

"Nicely done," Gideon laid a massive hand on Nissa's thin shoulder. She twitched and inhaled sharply. The tree-beast swung toward him and shook itself, leaves rattling a feline hiss.

He stepped back, hands in the air. "Easy, big fella. Not attacking mom."

Nissa laid a stilling hand on the beast. "Thank you. Rest now." It dug its wooden fingers and toes into the earth, groaned, and settled back into mere topiary. Nissa stood alone again, the beast's last pale blossom petals tumbling down around her.

Gideon rubbed his prickly jaw. "Hope Jace is all right with us landscaping."

Liliana glanced at Chandra. She was up on her toes, leaning forward over the rail with a dazzled little smile. "Careful you don't fall off."

Chandra hopped back down, and stuck out her tongue. "Like I would. Come on, I'm hungry."

Liliana smiled and followed. Behind her, Gideon's voice echoed from the courtyard bricks. "Nissa, before you go. That thing I do, where I clap people on the shoulder? Does that make you uncomfortable?"

Liliana paused at the door, listening. If the elf responded, her words weren't audible.

"I'm sorry. I hadn't realized. I won't do it again." Liliana couldn't imagine his expression, but his tone dripped such brown-eyed-shaggy-dog sincerity her lips twitched with irritation.

"Thank you." Barely more than a whisper of wind on leaves.

"If anything makes you uncomfortable, let me know, all right? Especially if it's me."

Liliana set her mouth in a hard line and followed after Chandra, boots clicking on the hardwood, silk hem swishing in her wake. If she listened to any more she might vomit. Of course the elf gets apologies and promises. Two hundred years ago, she'd had to learn to break fingers.

* * *

There were a dozen ways into Jace's library, not counting the hidden passages her shades had found. Three stories of overflowing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, all in alphabetical order by author, and arranged by subject. After a few weeks, she'd started taking random books and placing them on other shelves. It would drive him insane when he noticed.

The marble table at the center was normally covered with Jace's neatly squared stacks of notes. He'd moved that into a private office; the library had become a common room because the table was the only one in the house large enough to accommodate them all. He'd visibly twitched when they started taking meals there.

Art by Adam Paquette

Today the table held only a pitcher of water and six glasses. Jace was already here, of course, pacing, frowning, flipping through a bundle of notes, and trying to keep clear of Lavinia, who'd stationed herself by the exterior door and stared pragmatically into the middle distance. You could almost see checklists and formation marches lockstepping behind her eyes, taking up cycles while she waited for something important to happen.

Liliana had seen her sort a thousand times. Dutiful, observant, entirely unimaginative. If she had a favored tavern, which seemed unlikely, her usual was a mug of room-temperature water.

Lavinia was almost certainly standing by the door to keep Jace from bolting out on some adventure. Of course, if he really wanted to leave, he just needed to be alone for a few minutes. She knew that now; with four Planeswalkers living here (and one availing herself of the amenities, thank you very much), it had been necessary to explain. Jace had invoked some Guildpact bylaw of subsection of article as amended and ratified by who the hell cares to swear her to secrecy.

Liliana smiled to herself as she scraped a chair out from under the table, imagining the guard banging on the door of the privy; "Are you still in there, Guildpact? Respond at once!"

Jace looked up at the noise of her chair. "You're early?" He sounded aghast. She was professionally affronted.

"No. Everyone else is later than me." She cast a critical eye up and down his form. Firm, fit, alert, hair combed. She mentally called bull on it. "You can drop the glamour, dear. No one cares."

He sighed, and shimmered as his illusion dropped. There was the real Jace; paler, hair rumpled, eyes sunken from late nights, and his chin tinted by the adorable peach fuzz that almost counted as a someday-maybe beard.

"Vanity?" she said. "That's not like you."

He raked a hand back through his hair, which did nothing to calm its random angles. "I should be at my best for team meetings. Project leadership. Confidence. The idea that I know what the hell I'm doing. And why am I telling you this?" He looked annoyed at himself.

She raised one ivory shoulder in a careless shrug. "Who else knows you well enough to understand?" Liliana leaned back in her chair and placed her feet up on the table, one ankle crossed over the other. The hem of her dress fell away from her boots in a rustle of silk.

"That's rude," Jace frowned.

"Mm."

His eyebrows collapsed into fuzzy perpendiculars of irritation. "And distracting."

Liliana favored him with a lazy, indolent smile. "I'll remember." She turned her attention to scanning the book spines nearby, and imagined his fuming.

Gideon thundered down the stairs, taking them two at a time as he yanked a shirt down over his various bulges, ripples, and throbbing bits. "Oh, good. You remembered today," she said.

He blinked at her. "What?"

"Nothing." She waved a careless half-salute in his direction. "Carry on, Sir General sir."

Jace set his notes down as Gideon pulled out the chair across from her. "That's nearly all of us, so I'll start. We can catch Chandra up when she gets here."

Liliana blinked and scanned the room. What about—oh. Nissa was sitting cross-legged in a chair under the shadow of the bookshelves, several steps removed from the table. She wondered how long the elf had been there.

"The short of it is," Jace continued, "I'm still tied up with Guildpact work, and will be for a while. When I got back from Innistrad, my desk was covered. Actually, the whole office was a maze of stacked papers and books. It took me five minutes to reach the desk."

A faint smile tugged the corner of Lavinia's mouth. Liliana revised her estimate of the woman's creativity upward.

Jace leaned on the table with the tips of his fingers. "I've put word out through—"

Bits of armor clattered and rang across the table. Jace glared up at Chandra. The pyromancer's arms swept up the pile of her spilled equipment. "Sowwy," she said around the pastry she held in her mouth. It dripped cinnamon icing on the marble. She collapsed in the chair beside Liliana, bit off a piece, and started strapping on pieces of armor. "Wha' wersh you shayin'?" she asked from the side of her mouth.

"I was saying," Jace said, with exaggerated patience, "that I've put word out through Tamiyo that the Gatewatch is ready to help. She and other Planeswalkers pass information to each other. They collect news and stories in their travels. The way bards work, but they carry word from other planes instead of the next town over."

"How many are they?" Gideon asked, resting his chin in one hand. "How often do they meet?"

Jace shook his head. "They're not organized like we are. It's informal. Practically gossip. But they move around often, and talk to many people. If someone wants help, they'll mention us. If someone needs help, they'll get word to us." He paused, and looked at each of them. "This has already borne fruit. Someone's sought us out. He's waiting outside."

Gideon grinned and sat straighter in his chair, which creaked at the shift in weight. "Outstanding work, Jace."

Jace nodded. "Our guest is Dovin Baan. He's Minister of Inspections for some kind of inventors' festival on Kaladesh." Warmth bloomed to Liliana's right. "Lavinia, could you see him in please?"

Minister. Hmm. Liliana took her feet off the table, sat up straight, and crossed her legs, brushing the folds of her dress into smoothness. A ripple passed over Jace; he'd re-summoned the neat and tidy illusion he'd been wearing when she entered.

Across the table from her, Gideon eyed their mutual preparations thoughtfully.

Chandra slumped further down in her chair, pulled her goggles down over her eyes, and folded her arms tight across her chest.

Art by Tyler Jacobson

The vedalken man was tall, thin as dueling blade, blue-skinned, and impeccably dressed. His suit was partially encased in whorls and filigrees of brass, bits of which hissed and ticked faintly. He descended the stairs with brisk, precise motions, hands clasped behind his back, and Liliana wondered how he managed it. Surely the bits of metal covering his sleeves would get tangled?

He paused as he passed a painting, frowned, and reached out to nudge it upward on one side.

"Minister Baan," Jace said. "These are my colleagues Nissa, Gideon, Chandra, and Liliana."

As she was introduced, Liliana unfolded from her chair and applied a pleasant smile. She curtseyed, keeping her eyes locked on Baan's as she bobbed. His were a fevered, restless fuchsia. A fascinating contrast from his cool demeanor. "Charmed, Minister." Her form was rusty, but she doubted he'd be familiar with the particulars of Dominarian court manners.

Baan laid an arm across his stomach and bowed to her from the waist, lowering his eyes to the floor before her. "Likewise, Miss Liliana."

"I hope your wait was comfortable?" Jace asked, indicating an empty chair at the far end of the table.

Baan glanced at it with momentary puzzlement, but made no move to sit. "The accommodations were tolerable."

Jace's projected face gave no hint of the discomfort Liliana's suspected lay beneath it. "Good. Well. What can the Gatewatch do for you?"

"I have come to inquire with regard to the matter discussed in my previous correspondence."

After a moment of silence, doubtless spent unpacking Baan's baroque grammar, Gideon cleared his throat. "Excuse us, Minister. Not everyone here has seen your letter."

Baan inhaled slowly. "Ah. Very well. I will recapitulate." Clasping his hands behind his back, he began to pace at the end of the table.

"I have the honor of coming before you as an officially and duly designated representative of the Consulate of Kaladesh. I have, of course, educated myself on the means of governance on Ravnica; your system of competing 'guilds.'" Baan pronounced the word with delicacy, as if it were some rare sweet he'd never encountered before. "Our Consulate stands in contrast. It is unified; centralized; meritocratic. All resources are administered and distributed by the rational and equal application of the law. We have achieved a society in which no one wants."

Liliana's right arm felt sunburned. She glanced at Chandra. A shimmer of heat-haze danced over the younger woman's head. Stray wisps of copper hair rose and wavered in the updraft. But she was silent, rigid, the muscles of her jaw rippling as she clenched her teeth.

Liliana quietly slid her chair to the left.

"Six months ago," Baan continued, "the Consulate scheduled an Inventors' Fair in the capital city of Ghirapur. It is to begin on the morning following. There are to be expositions of artifice in a variety of fields. Award of grants for exceptional work."

Baan allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up, ever so slightly. "It has been my pleasure to personally inspect all submissions for safety of visitors. If I may be forgiven for saying so, I believe the judges have many difficult choices to make. I am confident that at least one of our luminaries has managed to create an entirely new order of artifice."

He paused at the books stacked along the wall, and tapped the brass of his shoulder piece. An array of lenses whirred into place before his left eye. He peered through them for a moment, frowned, and drew one slim finger across the surface of the shelf.

"In recent weeks," he continued, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket as he turned on his heel, "preparations have been repeatedly disrupted by vandals and malcontents. My safety arrangements have thus far prevented any casualties." He wiped his finger with the handkerchief, carefully folded the cloth into quarters, and slid it back into a pocket. "However, efforts to discover and eliminate the source of this unrest have been less successful."

Baan's lens array ticked back into a storage position over his shoulder plate. "That is all."

Gideon cleared his throat. "So, to be clear, you want the Gatewatch to provide...security?"

"To root out the source of these attacks?" Jace suggested.

Baan looked from one to the other, and inhaled as if he'd smelled something from the bottom of a shoe. "Just so," he said. "As stated in my original correspondence."

"Who are these people?" Gideon asked. "Why do they want to disrupt a festival?"

Baan inclined his head. "A logical question, Mister Gideon. I regret there is no logical answer for your query. The renegades' grievances largely exist in the fevered space between their own ears. The most significant objection they can muster is that equal distribution to all by the Consulate is somehow 'unfair' to them personally. Put simply, they feel they are entitled to more than their fair share. When the Consulate declines to indulge their selfish desires, they resort to sabotage of government property and theft of resources appropriated for the common good."

Chandra's chair tilted over backward as she bolted to her feet. Liliana snapped out an arm and kept it from clattering to the floor as she stomped away, trailing heat-blurred air and sparks.

"What are you—?" Gideon began, but flinched away from Chandra's flickering hands as she passed him. She vaulted up the stairs two at a time, snarling eye-watering obscenities.

Baan's eyes followed her, his eyebrows arching skyward. "I trust she is aware that is not anatomically possible?"

Jace cleared his throat, too loudly. "Minister Baan?" The vedalken turned back to the table as the massive library doors slammed shut. "Are any of your renegades Planeswalkers?"

"Not to my knowledge."

Gideon shook his head, "Then I don't see how we can help. I'm sorry, but—"

"Wait." Jace leaned forward. "He said he doesn't know. We can prove one way or the other."

Baan closed his fever-bright eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between thin fingers. "Gentlemen, forgive my presumption. Which of you is making decisions for this group?"

Jace and Gideon looked at each other.

"Well..."

"Uh..."

"Gideon is the battlefield commander..."

"Jace is the administrator..."

"But we both..."

"But neither of us..."

Baan was clutching his head as if he had a migraine.

"Minister Baan," Liliana interrupted. She rose in an ostentatious swish of silk and lace, and affected her most disarming smile. "What troubles my...colleagues is the focus of our group. The Gatewatch was formed to stop people like us—Planeswalkers—from interfering with others. Problems from without, in other words. It sounds like your problems come from within. In which case," she gestured with feigned helplessness, "our hands are tied."

Baan released a slow, relieved breath. "Ah. Thank you, Miss Liliana. Your position is abundantly clear to me to now. I did not fully comprehend the strictures you operate under. Of course I cannot expect you to violate the laws that bind your organization." He bowed to her again. "My sincerest apologies. In the future I will endeavor to be more thorough in my research. If you will permit me, I shall take my leave."

Jace stared at Liliana open-mouthed, annoyance and astonishment warring across his face. Priceless.

"Uh, hold on," Gideon jumped to his feet. "Minister, you should at least stay for dinner."

Baan looked at him as if he'd grown several additional heads. "Mister Gideon, even if I considered it acceptable to further impose upon your hospitality, I am sorely needed on Kaladesh. I have no doubt that since I departed, there have been several acts of sabotage."

Gideon grinned at Baan. "Planeswalks can be taxing, and you've already done one today. We couldn't let you go on an empty stomach. Rules of hospitality, let's say. While we get that made, I could give you a tour of Jace's hou—of our headquarters."

Baan stared down his nose at him. "I assure you, my fitness is within acceptable boundaries for one of my age and profession, though I do not believe the matter to be any of your concern. Still. If it is your custom to provide sustenance to a departing guest, I will respect it."

"Outstanding!" He moved to clap the Minister on the shoulder, but stopped himself and disguised the instinct as an awkward stretch.

Lavinia cleared her throat. "Guildpact. Before your associates leave. The other business?"

Gideon paused. "Other business?"

Jace grimaced. "While I was away on Zendikar and Innistrad, a few influential members in the Azorius Senate were...eliminated."

"Certainly a concern," Gideon said. "But what does that have to—"

"You said 'eliminated,'" Liliana interjected. "Not 'killed.'"

Jace nodded. "They were petrified. Turned to stone." He hesitated. Liliana raised her brows. Jace speechless? How intriguing. "About a year ago, there was a gorgon assassin operating on Ravnica. A planeswalking gorgon, with a grudge against the Azorius. I stopped her, but...irritated her."

"You have such a way with ladies," Liliana said.

"The point is," Jace said, "she swore she'd be back someday."

Gideon rubbed his jaw, eyes flickering to Lavinia. "Huh. Any leads?"

"Not yet," Lavinia said.

Jace turned to Gideon. "I'd like you to investigate this."

He shook his head. "You're the best choice, Jace. Look into it and report back to me."

Liliana's eyes flickered from one to the other. So glad she had her own place. Though if things ever came to a group vote, this made it easier to tilt things in whatever direction she wished.

"You have no idea how much I'd like to handle this myself," Jace said. There was a faint creak of leather as Lavinia's gloved hand tightened on her scabbard. "I have paperwork." He spat it like an obscenity. "Gideon, I'm not going to...it's not an order, all right? It's just something that needs to be done. I can't do it myself, and I think you'd work well with the Azorius. Better than Liliana would, at any rate."

"Oh, he's right about that," Liliana said, mildly. She was fairly certain they would still have her wanted posters up from four years ago, when she and Jace had worked for Tezzeret's criminal Consortium. Odd to consider how much had changed since then. Now Jace was the one the Azorius appealed to for aid, and she was more powerful than the guild could possibly deal with.

She laid a hand over the hidden pocket where she kept the Chain Veil. Not that she needed to assure herself of its presence. She could feel the icy sprawl of it against her thigh, and when her concentration lapsed, the whispers of the Onakke spirits possessing it rasped from the darker corners of the room.

"That makes sense," Gideon said, nodding slowly. "All right. Lavinia, I'd like a summary of what the Azorius know."

The guard looked scandalized. "A summary? Captain Jura, the witness statements alone total several thousand—"

"I'm new here." He gave her an easy smile. "I need to rely on your expertise. I know it's a lot to ask, but could you get something for me by tonight? Even a little would be great."

Lavinia flustered under his gaze. "Absolutely, sir."

"Thank you, Lavinia," Gideon gestured to Baan, and moved toward the door on the far end of the room. "Jace's kitchen staff is incredible. Perk of being Guildpact, apparently. What's your interest?"

Jace dropped his illusion of calm and glared into Liliana's smile.

"I am content with a loaf of unleavened bread, a thin cut of meat, and water."

A booming laugh. "We can do better than that!" They turned down a hallway.

Lavinia tromped off, making notes on a small pad.

They were alone again.

Liliana placed herself between the table and the door to Jace's office as he gathered his paperwork. He scowled to see her waiting, lowered his chin, and marched past her looking into the distance. She smiled benignly. Magnanimously. "In the future, my dear, maybe you should leave the talking to me?"

"I hate it when you do that," Jace said, low and colder than she thought she'd earned. "When you walk in and take over. Like you own everything and everyone. Then expect me to thank you." He turned his shoulder to her and brushed past.

Her words came out by reflex, unbidden; pain for pain. She breathed into the collapsing space between them, "I remember when you enjoyed that."

Then he was gone, leaving behind only his angry words, each a nail of ice pounded into her heart.

Well, damn it. There went her good mood. She swiped a hand beneath one eye (just being sure, nothing would ever be there), then squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. To Grixis with him, then. Let's see where Chandra stormed off to. That could be fun.

She turned toward the stairs, and noticed Nissa's chair was empty. The elf had left as unobtrusively as she'd arrived.

It was only when she was halfway to the second floor that Liliana realized Nissa hadn't said a single word through the entire meeting.

* * *

I keep throwing punches.

The jolts pass up my arms, irregular, staccato. Gids's punchy-kicky bag of sand swings and wobbles under the blows.

If he were here, he'd be telling me to pace myself, keep my arms straight, use short and controlled jabs, so I guess it's just too bad for me he's listening to that Consulate butt instead.

Inventors' Fair? The hell. They killed the best damn inventors on Kaladesh. Baan and his sort. The Consuls and their damn stupid rules.

Now they're trying to hunt down somebody else. Someone else's kid. Maybe someone else's—

The canvas of Gids's punchybag bursts into flames.

"Oh crap!"

There's gotta be—he's gotta have water in here. He's like the king of eight glasses a day. I scan the room. Weights. Wrestle-y floor-pillow dealies. Big ball I'm not supposed to throw at Jace again. More weights. Rack of weird stuff he never explained. More different weights. There!

I slide across the table and grab for the bucket below the window. It smells funny. Maybe he soaks his head in it, I don't know. Just need the water.

Behind me, the canvas bursts, and sand hisses across the floor.

Oh, damn it.

I pour the bucket over flaming scraps of fabric.

That's a big pile of mud. I wonder if it will ruin the floor? I stick the toe of my boot in and trace a line across the mess. Maybe I should make a sand castle.

I hate this. I hate the me that breaks nice people's crap. Even if Gids is being nice to one of the people who killed my—

My eyes are stinging again. I drop the bucket and rub them. Sparks and embers drift away.

Maybe Gids totally deserves it. Screw his punchybag.

Why am I even here? I don't belong here.

I should go back to Regatha. Do that stupid ritual where you spend all night watching a log burn. Bit by bit it starts to glow. Red, orange, yellow, crawling up the bark. Flaring and fading down again. Then it turns grey and falls into ash. "This is what it means to be consumed by divinity," Mother Luti said. "Transformed." Old life falls away and blah blah blah.

Which divinity? The Eldrazi? The guys who screwed over Gids? I can't believe in a god that burns everyone they touch. A god's gotta be better than that.

I remember the pool.

Behind the power that shook the strength from my legs.

It was there. I saw it. I swear I saw it.

She was floating in green and I could breathe there.

That's where I want to be.

I need to be there.

It's an itch I gotta scratch. Crawling up my spine and under my hair. Gotta go now.

My feet have already taken me to the door. No, stop. Can't just barge in and...I mean, weird, right? Rude. I don't want her to think I'm the sort that just breaks in and...all right, maybe I am the sort who does that, but I'm trying real hard to be polite now. I just need to take a few minutes to—

Damn it, I'm already up the stairs. And I'm stomping down the hall like a big freak because my legs are shaking and my brain is sizzling. This is stupid. I'm going to stop putting one foot in front of the other. I'm going to turn around. I'm going to tiptoe down the stairs real quiet, like a little baby mouse. Any second now. Damn it, Chandra, don't open that door. Stop gawping at the ginormous flowers that weren't here a month ago. Bad Chandra, no cinnamon pastry. Just turn around, go back downstairs, and never think of doing this agai—

"Chandra?"

FFFFFFFFF...

"H-hey. Nissa? You in here?" Yeah, that's it. Casual. Smooth. Be all nonchalant, like Liliana. Nothing gets to Liliana.

"I mean, heh, 'course you're in here. 'Cause you just talked. I mean, uh, you got a minute? Maybe?" All right you can stop talking now.

"Yes. I'm behind the kass—behind the purple flowers."

My hands are shaking. I push branches aside and walk toward her voice. The leaves feel like sandpaper. Just a little farth—

She's sitting cross-legged on a patch of moss. Dark hair unbound, spilling in waves over her shoulders, trailing across her lap. She's woven little flowers around the crown of her head. Butterflies are dancing around her. She pays them no mind. A shaft of light through the leaves paints her in golden sun. She smells like anyone's best childhood memory.

She hasn't taken her eyes off me. Just sits. Listens. Waits. It's making me itchy and I think I'm sweating.

When was the last time I took a bath? Aren't elves supposed to have super dog noses or something?

Also, I'm standing bent over under a branch, holding leaves out of my face like a freaking idiot. "Uh. Can I sit?" I'm breathing through my mouth, fighting for air, struggling not to be loud about it.

"Please." She gestures. Her arm moves like water. Just sorta flows.

Then I manage to trip and fall on my face.

"Oh!" she reaches out, but her fingers seem to bounce off an invisible bubble a handspan away from me. "There's a root..." She pulls her hand back, cradles it with her other arm.

"I'm fine!" I blurt into the dirt, then roll on to my knees and grab my head to make sure I really am. Bleeding from my face would be super embarrassing during this conversation. "Are you fine?"

She cocks her head to the side. "I..."

"Ha-ha-ha! 'Course you are. Sorry. I'm the one who fell on her face." SHUT UP SHUT UP.

I try to sit like she is, but the armor on my shins digs into my thighs. I lean against a tree, stretch out my legs, cross them at the ankles.

Wait! My feet are almost touching her knees. I shouldn't do that. She might not like that. I shift my weight, point them off to one side.

Great. Now I have a root jabbing into my butt.

She just watches me. Silent. Patient.

I giggle and try to push the hair off my sweaty forehead. I'm steaming under her gaze, skin gone molten. "I think I'm crushing your flowers."

"They'll be fine." Her eyes are so deep. When I was a kid, there was this quarry outside Ghirapur. It had filled with water, and moss and floaty green stuff grew all over it. Deep, black, still. If you fell in, you'd never reach the bottom. That's what they said, anyways. I'm standing at the edge, too scared to jump.

She clears her throat. "Can I help with something?"

I swallow, but my throat's dried up and it takes a few tries. "I—I just thought that...You know that time on Zendikar, when our minds touched? I felt Zendikar's anger, right? The power of a whole world. Your world. And it was amazing. The most incredible thing ever. But behind Zendikar, behind the anger and the power, I felt you. Your mind. And it was real tranquil, you know? You kinda...centered me, I guess. You were all calm and connected-y."

Then my brain shuts off, but my mouth keeps walking over a cliff.

"When I touched that part of you, it was like when you're swimming, and you just lie back and float, looking up at the sky. Nothing below. Just blue and air above, and everything's cool and still. You can see forever, and don't have to worry..."

WHAT IS COMING OUT OF MY FACE?

I run a hand back through my sweaty hair. "Ha ha, wow. You must think this is dumb, huh? I come in here and start spouting bad poetry—"

The tiniest of smiles. "I thought it eloquent."

I grab a strand of my hair and yank until it hurts. That will keep me focused, I bet. "Anyways. I was thinking there are times when I get super pi—uh, real angry, and usually something blows up. But I think I'd rather be able to touch that place again. What your mind felt like. Calm. Grounded. I mean..." I make the mistake of looking up and her eyes are just there, watching, and all the air in my throat jams up and refuses to move.

I struggle to pull in a breath. "I think Jace would prefer that. So I don't wreck his house. I mean, he's got this expensive stuff all over."

"I can teach you to meditate, if you wish."

"Uh, yeah." Let's go with that. Sounds good.

Her pencil-sketch eyebrows go all bendy. "Are you unwell? You seem anxious."

The entire garden is full of floaty sparkly silver things, I spent the last hour trying not to blow up Jace's house, and my heart's slamming against my ribcage like I just ran a marathon. I'M GREAT THANKS FOR ASKING.

Instead I blurt, "It's just, you've been staring at me this whole time."

"You're speaking to me. Should I not pay attention?" I swear her lip trembles. "Is this not—not polite on your world?" She looks away for the first time, and one hand tugs a grass-stem ear. The snow of her cheek is brushed with sunset color.

WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY?

"Wha—uh, no! I mean...Sorry!"

I'm on my feet, slamming my head into a low branch. "Ow! S-sorry. This was dumb." I back away, clutching my head, pulling in my elbows to hide my burning eyes, stumbling over the same damn root, shaking, panting for breath, stomach churning. What did I do, what did I do, what did I do?

She's on her feet in the turn of a breath. "Wait."

"I made you feel weird. I should go. I'm just gonna go. Sorry. Bye. Sorry."

"Chandra, please..."

I turn and run, trailing sparks, trees and flowers smearing around me, banging through the door.

...I think I'm gonna puke.

* * *

"What a disaster," Liliana murmured. She leaned one hip against the door into Beefslab's gymnasium. After the scene downstairs, she'd expected fire damage. The sandcastle was a surprise.

Gideon's voice boomed from the stairs behind her, "Up here's where I exercise. I've been trying to train up Chandra and Jace, get everyone able to handle an actual weapon. You know. Just in case."

"I have every confidence it will prove equally fascinating as the rest of your facility," Baan replied, wearily.

BANG.

She startled, turning in time to see Chandra hurtle down past Baan and Gideon, a red-haired comet trailing embers from her eyes.

"SorryIblewupyourthingy," she said in passing, the words floating up from underwater.

Then she was gone, the thunder of her feet rumbling down the stairs.

"Careful! You might fall!" Gideon yelled down after her.

Liliana stepped into the stairwell and glanced upwards. Nissa looked down with hands clasped and fretting at her chest, lips parted with unvoiced confusion, long ears drooping.

Liliana shook her head and started down the stairs. Someone had to clean up the mess. Chandra was easy to read. Too easy. Yet she commanded incredible power. A convenient combination.

The sun was westering, settling down into a long, hot afternoon. Low slate clouds to the east promised evening rain, the kind that would make the summer air thicker instead of cooler.

Not that heat bothered her greatly. Necromantic powers had benefits seldom mentioned in brochures. For example, a body temperature low enough to alarm healers. It made summers far more pleasant, and her breath frigid instead of warm. Jace had been preternaturally sensitive to it. The slightest puff of air on his neck had been enough to wake him from sleep.

She frowned and firmly pushed the memory out of mind.

Chandra wasn't hard to find. Setting aside the fact that she had a tendency to knock into people and objects when running flat out, her hair was smoking, in a subtly different color from the food carts scattered around the plaza. Liliana didn't even need to summon a shade to help search.

She was crouched halfway down an alley three blocks from Jace's home, its entrance hidden behind a hoarse food vendor whose cart smelled of cheap pork and overboiled cabbage. Curled up knees to chin, back to a brick wall, she tugged on handfuls of her copper hair.

Sibilant whispers echoed from the alley mouth; "Stupid, stupid, stupid..."

This wouldn't do at all. Liliana swept imperiously around the corner, careful to lift her skirts clear of the rainbow-skimmed puddles. "Why, Chandra, here you are."

She bolted to her feet, wiping under her nose with the back of a shaky hand. "Uh, hey. What—what are you doing here?"

"I was on my way to do some shopping," Liliana extemporized. She'd probably believe that. Big Sis Liliana, leading the glamorous lifestyle and whatnot.

She sniffed and gave a skeptical look. "In an alley?"

"We don't all shop in the same places," Liliana said. "Care to join me?"

Chandra looked over her shoulder, down at the other end of the alley, where crowd-shadows flickered and danced across the afternoon light. "Anyone with you? Gids?"

"Goodness, no. He wouldn't be caught dead shopping with me."

She grinned. "But if he was, you'd raise him to carry your bags!" She paused. "Did you just let me have a necromancer joke?"

"Just this once. Because I like you." The stiffness in Chandra's shoulders relaxed, just slightly. Good.

Chandra wiped under her nose again, then absently rubbed the hand clean on the shawl tied around her waist. "So what are you even shopping for?"

"Oh, nothing terribly important," Liliana said, airily. "A bottle of wine, a half-dozen dead cats—seven to ten days decomposed, by preference—lavender-scented candles, a twelve-inch bone saw..."

Chandra's mouth worked for a moment before the words came. "I...can't tell if you're joking?"

"Then I suppose you'll have to come along and see. We can talk on the way."

* * *

All was dark. Cold. Silent. Dampness encased her. A distant warmth filtered down, the lightest breath on the small of her back. She'd waited an eternity, sleeping under moons of cracking ice and pounding rain, feeling the press of quick lives passing overhead.

It was time to move.

Slowly she unwound, pushing back against the softness that pressed in on her. Her limbs stretched, creaking and quaking from an eternity spent huddled in the dark. All around she could feel her siblings stirring. The warmth on her back was drumming into them all, calling. It was time to meet, at last.

...Nissa...

She pushed against the weight above her. Strained. Pale, thin toes sank into the velvet depths below her belly, down where the long cold still lurked and growled, stretching knives of clearest crystal through unknown spaces. She shuddered with the strain.

Maybe she couldn't do it. Maybe she'd be down here forever. Lost, collapsing back into a forgotten husk. Not dead, but never-lived.

...Nissa?

The darkness broke over her.

She shuddered, aching, unsteady legs pushing up, arms shaking as they unfolded from her torso. Every move was agony. The heat beat down, making cold-choked blood flow, filling her limbs with strength and color. Her head lifted into the light, hair spreading into radiance.

"Nissa?"

Art by Zack Stella

The word cracked across her from a thousand leagues away.

She was yanked away in the span of a breath.

The world flashed past. Jumbles of wood and fungus growing over and through one another, breathing together; wastelands of hissing dust, patiently eating stone; ranks of muttering clouds opening themselves to the earth below; ranks of axe-blade stone clawing open the sky; waters deep, cold, and empty.

She blinked at Gideon, momentarily baffled by his grunting beast-sounds—words, some part of her corrected—and by the club-shapes—fingers—waving before eyes that suddenly saw light instead of heat. "I..."

I'm not a seed.

Nissa. I'm Nissa again.

He looked at her expectantly. Rain tapped against the windows of Jace's library. Her words came out broken and creaking, "I'm sorry, Gideon. What did you say?"

He showed his teeth. A grin. "Thought you'd fallen asleep for a minute."

"I was..." A flower struggling out of spring tundra half a world away, delighting in the first touch of the sun. She searched his kind and open face, but found no capacity for understanding. No context she could appeal to. No words that could explain.

"...I was just thinking." She looked down at her lap, where a bowl of food sat untouched.

He speared a hunk of meat from his plate with a utensil—fork, she remembered—that was all but lost between his thick, calloused fingers. "I was telling Minister Baan what you did on Zendikar. You and Chandra."

Chandra. The blood surging hot through her freckled cheeks, the sharp, swift movements of her hands. They'd moved like birds.

Nissa fed birds sometimes, in the garden. They would peer at the seeds cupped in her hand, hungry and needing, but fluttered off when she moved the wrong way.

She'd moved the wrong way, and Chandra had flown.

All her senses and instincts were off.

Ravnica had beaten against her since she arrived, the hot, constant breath of a beast on the back of her neck. The sun was blinding white, the smells thick and unpleasant. Every surface seemed to have edges made to cut and tear.

An endless array of faces milled and circled the streets, strange and terrifying. More faces than she thought could ever exist. They melted into one another, became a single monstrosity with a thousand heads that jostled past her. A walk around the building left her sweaty and trembling. She had to crouch and study the lone flowers that struggled through the cracked cobbles, had to ignore the milling, noisy shapes that shoved and kicked and poked.

There was no silence. Discordant anvils rang by day. Endless banquets hissed and roared from a thousand ovens. The wail of sirens and the crackle of mana by night. A million voices constantly yelling and screaming, crying in pain and grief, lust and anger, overlapping in babble. She hadn't heard the shush of wind through trees for three months. She hadn't heard nothing.

The faces. The noise. The million and one unfamiliar smells that settled in the back of her throat to gag her. When it was too much to bear, she'd curl up in the garden, cover her ears, and the trees would hold her safe.

Everything here was hard, and bright, and sharp.

Chandra. Eyes like sunrises. Every passing thought writ bold across her face. Fearless.

Oh, Zendikar, how did I offend her? What did I do?

But her friend—her best friend, her constant companion for two score years—couldn't answer. The corner of her mind where Zendikar had lived was silent and empty. There's so much I don't understand. I wish you could be here.

She'd never been among so many, and never been so alone.

"Nissa?"

"Yes." She lifted a small red fruit from her bowl. Tomato, Jace called it. Taut skin flush with water, smelling faintly of acid. "What did you want to know?"

Baan laid his utensils across the edges of his plate at an angle so precise it hurt her eyes, then steepled his fingers. "Indulge my curiosity, if you will, Miss...Nissa." He frowned as the title made him hiss. "I am given to understand you have the ability to perceive and manipulate naturally occurring patterns of magic. Through the land, I believe?"

The golden filigree over his coat was ticking softly, a counterpoint to the clock on the far side of the room. She could hear energy within it sizzling and snapping, imperceptible to Gideon, and perhaps to Baan; his ears were as small as a human's.

"Leylines," she said. "Yes."

His nostrils pinched as he inhaled sharply. "A fascinating inversion. On my world, similar energies stream through the upper reaches of the sky. Aether, it is called. We siphon this power—on mountaintops or from thopters—store it within mechanical devices, and release it for various productive uses. Do people do the same on your world?"

Dagger-blade stones floating in the air, bending the world. A web, a cage...a lattice.

A wave of nausea passed through her.

"No," she said to her bowl, shoulders drawing inwards. "Some did, but they..." The tales piled up against the back of her teeth. Where could she even begin? "The land isn't—we ask. We don't take."

"Ask?" Baan echoed, turning the word sideways in his mouth. "Ask whom? Your leylines are naturally occurring phenomena, surely?" His voice thinned with saline contempt. The shape of his eyes changed, tissues settling into harsh angles. "Would you ask the mountain for its kind permission to shape the iron at its root? Would you beg the tree for the fruit that sustains you?"

"Yes," she said, and nothing more. She placed the tomato in her mouth and bit down. The water flooded out—the sharp light of a white sun beating down, rows of dark earth spiced with the remains of those gone before; gently tilled lanes, the hush of elves and dryads swaying among them; tilting cans to set brief, borrowed rains tapping and shivering down leaves.

A lifetime carried in a mouthful of sweet flesh. Months of patience. Thank you, she thought, and swallowed.

Gideon shifted in his chair, leaning forward, subtly placing himself between them. "Minister, things are...different on Nissa's world."

The heavy door at the far end of the room opened, and Jace trudged out looking drained. Lavinia drifted into his wake. When he muttered, "I could really use drink," she pushed a mug of tea into his hand, its steam fragrant with lemon, hibiscus, and several herbs Nissa didn't recognize. He blinked. "How did you know to...?"

"It's my job to anticipate you, Guildpact," she said, crisply. "Should I get someone to reheat your dinner?"

"No. Thanks, Lavinia." He pulled a chair out—old oak, dark and worn from years of sun. Nissa wondered where the chair had come from. It was far older than the house. The life it had held was just a whisper now, a shadow cast on a cloudy day.

Jace's plate contained some yellow-white mass involving cheese and grains. Even cold, she could smell it from the far side of the room. He frowned. "Did they put broccoli in this?"

"You need iron," Lavinia said.

"I hate—"

"You won't even notice it's there." Her voice brooked no argument.

Baan regarded him coolly. "You were bullied as a child."

Jace coughed on his first mouthful of food and struggled to swallow. "I, uh, don't remember my childhood." A dozen unvoiced thoughts flickered behind his eyes.

The Kaladeshi raised his brows. "One need not consciously recollect an event to fall into habitual behaviors determined by the experience. It is not inconceivable that one could forget their entire life. I would safely wager that were that the case, the subject would still tend to make similar lapses of judgement, and would be drawn to associate with the same sorts of people." He waved a hand, the swish of an ox's tail dismissing flies. "The nature of mortals is not so malleable as some would naively suppose. A person of religious inclination will always find something greater than themselves to place their faith in. A criminal will forever remain a criminal."

Jace put his fork down. "That's a very...deterministic point of view, Minister."

Baan blinked, first one eye, then the other. Not a wink, but some form of body language unique to him, unlike any Nissa had seen before. "The mortal corpus, even the mind, is merely a series of sophisticated mechanisms. It is simplicity itself to observe a mechanism in action, and draw appropriate conclusions."

There was a moment of silence. Jace cleared his throat. "Did you enjoy the tour?"

Nissa looked down at her food. She plucked out a piece of steamed fish with her fingers and let the flavor melt across her tongue. Quicksilver bodies flickering under green shadows. The grit of suspended peat, the faint tang of metal. It was not her first language, but there all the same. Thank you, she thought. I will use what you've given with wisdom.

Baan's chair creaked as he settled back. "There are a number of structural and organizational deficiencies I believe it best you be made aware of. The load-bearing beams on the lowest levels are cracked. Application of sufficient force would cause them to give way. The arrangement of furniture in most of the bedrooms is inefficient, leaving many "pockets"—if you will excuse the imprecision of the term—of floor space too small to make practical use of. There are seventeen books that were returned to incorrect shelves in this library. A number of lamps on the second floor lack appropriate protection from drafts..."

"Maybe I should write this down," Gideon said, with a lopsided smile.

"I'll remember it all," Jace said.

Baan paused. "I am given to understand that the incident within Mister Gideon's gymnasium was the responsibility of a pyromancer in your employ?"

"'Employ' might be too strong a word."

"Regardless of the particulars of your arrangement, the lack of appropriate precautionary measures is deplorable. You possess a library of admirable scope and selection. To a pyromancer, this is merely so much kindling. If a conflagration were to start in here—"

"I have...differences with Chandra, but I trust her to..." Jace paused. "Where is Chandra?"

Nissa looked up. Chandra's usual seat at the table was empty.

Gideon shrugged. "I've been looking for her myself. We need to have a talk about proper care of other people's equipment. Last I saw, she was running down from the roof—"

Her breath caught.

"—and Liliana was following her."

Jace looked up sharply. Lavinia, standing watch by the door, cleared her throat. "Guildpact. Permission to report?"

"What? Yes!" Jace turned entirely around in his chair. "You know where they are?"

Lavinia straightened, almost imperceptibly. "Some time ago, Captain Jura requested I have someone follow Countess Vess when she leaves."

Jace glared at Gideon, who shrugged. "Necromancer. Only prudent." He put another forkful of steak in his mouth.

Lavinia shifted weight to her other foot, setting her armor to humming, a tone no one else in the room could hear. "She contacted Monk Nalaar—"

Baan leaned forward in his chair. His eyes narrowed.

"They spent the afternoon wandering the market district, then, ah...planeswalked."

"Together?" Jace asked.

"Yes, sir."

Gideon put down his fork. "Where to?"

"No way for us to know, sir."

"Nalaar," Baan said, softly. He pronounced it with the same enunciation Chandra used, and none of the others had ever quite managed to reproduce. "You must excuse my consternation. That is a name I have not heard for many years."

Jace pushed his plate aside and laid his hands on the table. "I need you to explain that."

"I would not say it is my pleasure to do so, but I do believe it is my obligation." Baan folded his hands in his lap. "Pia and Kiran Nalaar were early luminaries of the renegade movement. They were criminals, I regret to say, engaged in the theft and unlawful redistribution of Consulate aether resources."

"They're relatives of Chandra's?" Gideon asked. "I didn't even know she was from Kaladesh..."

"Her parents, unless I greatly miss my guess. Twelve years ago, they compelled their daughter—her name was not recorded—to assist in their smuggling operations. I am not familiar with the details, but the girl escaped custody when she manifested dangerous pyromantic abilities. The Nalaars attempted to hide in the countryside. A manhunt brought them to ground in Bunarat, but during the attempt to take them into custody, the village was set ablaze. All three were reported dead by the officer in charge."

"Twelve years?" Gideon said, aghast. "But she's only—!"

"She would have been a child," Nissa said, softly.

Baan opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked inward, tapping his fingers on the filigree covering his sleeve. "Please understand," he said at last. "This was performed under the authority of a previous administration. Even then, these actions were considered...extraordinary. The officer in charge of the investigation pursued despite an official recall. I believe formal charges were brought against him for the expense."

"For the expen—!" Jace sputtered.

"I don't know what her parents did," Gideon said, his mouth a hard line. "I don't much care, either. Whatever their sins were, they had nothing to do with Chandra." His eyes narrowed. "Is she impulsive? Sure. I'd be stupid not to say that. But her heart's the size of the moon."

Baan laced his fingers and rested his chin on them. "Mister Gideon, aether is in the very air we breathe. It is in the rain that falls to earth, and in the leaves of the trees. We only dare touch such power through the gloves of artifice; a million pieces of instrumentality, each safely performing its assigned function. By rigorous adherence to this method, we avoid 87.4% of the accidents provoked by mages drawing upon mana directly. If you will forgive me for saying so, pyromancers are particularly prone to...collateral damage." Baan inhaled slowly, fuchsia eyes darting around some image that only existed in his thoughts. "In the past, pyromancers have precipitated...terrible tragedies. Not always by their intent, but universally by their nature."

"So have you outlawed matches?" Gideon asked, with a severity Nissa hadn't heard from him before.

Baan lowered his eyes. "May I assume, based upon your reactions, that Miss Nalaar never spoke to you of this?"

"Not a word," Gideon said. He stared at his unfinished meal, one hand curling into a fist.

Jace looked at him sympathetically, "She didn't confide in any of us."

Gideon shook his head slightly. "But she should have felt that she could."

"That was her choice to make. Not ours," Nissa murmured. She laid a fingertip along the rim of her bowl and slid it down, setting the pottery to ringing. "We all have scars we don't want others to touch."

Chandra had sat across from her, cheeks burning, twisting flower-stems around her fingers, asking for nothing more than a moment of peace. For something that could slow the frantic, bird-like stammer of her heart. But she'd moved the wrong way. Chandra had fluttered and flown.

"If I may inquire," Baan said, "Where do you suppose she might have gone? Surely she could not be so rash as to depart for Kaladesh."

Nissa looked up. Jace and Gideon were exchanging a look. Both glanced at her.

They stood as one.

Jace turned toward the coat room. "I'll head to Kaladesh. It should be easy for me to—"

Lavinia appeared in his path, one hand resting on the pommel her sword. "Again?" she said, in a weary, disappointed tone.

He frowned up at her. "You can't expect me to sit here and do paperwork!"

She nodded to Gideon and Nissa. "They can find Monk Nalaar. They can't be the Guildpact."

Gideon laid a meaty hand on Jace's shoulder. "She's not wrong. Think of the bigger picture, Jace. I can take this one. Although," he winced, "I'm not looking forward to it. You know how she gets when someone tells her what to do..."

Kaladesh. Ghirapur. A city of brass and industry. Like Ravnica, a place that never slept, where the wind smelled of metal and cracking energies, and ceaseless tides of mortal faces buffeted to and fro. An ocean of strangers, gawping and whispering at her. Staring. Pointing. Shoving.

"I'll go." The words had flown before she'd thought them.

Gideon turned to her. "Are you sure?" His eyes drifted down to her trembling fingers. "Nissa, you don't have to go alone."

She balled her hands into fists, stilling them. "I will go to Kaladesh. Baan can guide me. I'll..."

What?

Bring Chandra home? She was home.

Get her out of trouble? She was a woman grown. She could do as she pleased.

Protect her? Chandra's heart was a baloth. She needed no champion.

"...I'll stand with her."

It felt right.

2

A Time for Innovation

By Kimberly J. Kreines

On Kaladesh, the Inventors' Fair—the intersection of creativity and genius—has begun. Inventors have flocked to the city of Ghirapur to take part in the event of a lifetime. This is their chance to see and be seen, to win over the hearts of the populace and the judges. The dedicated aether researcher Rashmi hopes to do just that; she needs the judges to believe in her creation if she hopes to leave her mark and change the world.

* * *

By now the city of Ghirapur and its residents had become acclimated to the presence of the enormous beetle-like inquirium. The sprawling, sophisticated research facility sat with its six long, metal legs tucked under its body in the corner of Ghirapur's central square. Whereas before traffic would slow to a standstill while drivers gawked open-mouthed at its gleaming, bulbous metal protrusions and aether-measuring antenna, now commuters sped by barely even noticing its presence. The inquirium had been stationary for so long that a family of peafowl had taken up residence, nesting in a groove in the segment that most resembled the beetle's head. Even when, once every hour or so, a sizzling sputter rose from the bowels of the laboratory, issuing an array of crackling sparks through the exhaust tower, the birds didn't so much as stir. Life had adapted; Ghirapur had claimed the inquirium as part of its identity like so many of its other eclectic landmarks. Hardly anyone stopped to wonder anymore about the brilliant researcher who lived inside.

Rashmi had all but forgotten them as well. She had all but forgotten everything except the device she was designing. Just a few months ago, the subject of matter transportation had become a hot topic within the usually subdued aetherologist societies. Within the small inventor circle, it had gone from a theory that people only whispered about to an obsession. But only Rashmi had a device capable of powering such a venture. Her groundbreaking aether condenser, which had gone nearly unnoticed when she first introduced it, would now be thrust into the spotlight as the centerpiece of the transporter. It was as though the condenser was made for this very application, as though she, Rashmi, was made for this very experiment. The aether patterns were aligned, they were pulling things into place, rushing with unstoppable momentum toward the crescendo.

She would do it. She would complete the device, just in time for the Fair, just in time to prove to the world what was possible.

"Tweezer." Rashmi held out her hand.

"Tweezer." Her vedalken assistant, Mitul, placed the tool on her palm.

She twisted a fine piece of wire into place, listening to the pattern of aether as she worked. Knowing the aether allowed her to tighten the wire just enough to secure it without causing strain on the metal. "Calipers."

Mitul traded the tweezer for calipers. "Mark at 3.084."

Rashmi made the mark. "We're definitely pushing the upper limit with this."

"It can handle it. I performed the calculation. Thrice." Mitul took the calipers and gave her an optical center punch.

She punched a hole in the golden metal piping and, with the care of a surgeon, inserted the new filament, connecting it to the rest of the aether-circuitry. "That should do it." Rashmi stood up, stretching her cramped neck, a surge of nervous thrill running through her. Although they had performed hundreds of trials, she still felt a rush each time they were ready for another; any one might be the trial that proved their theory. Especially now, with the Fair so close.

"I will set up." Moving with a poise that Rashmi envied, Mitul strode to a pot that sat in the sunlight that streamed down from the dome window above. He plucked a living flower from the pot and deposited it in a waiting vase on the table in the center of the room. "Test subject number 848 ready." Mitul stepped back.

Rashmi tried not to think of the other flowers that had come before 848.

She hefted the transporter off the workbench and carried it to the test area. It was in the shape of a large gold hoop, about as big around as the wheel of a Consulate cruiser. Holding it above the top of the flower, Rashmi slid a golden filigree switch to activate the aether valve. Vibrations echoed from within as glowing blue aether rushed through the ring. She opened herself to the Conduit, willing her other senses to dull so she could see the aether. The pattern it made as it flowed through the transporter was exquisite. The tweaks to the design had altered the flow just enough to add a repeating flourish at intervals around the ring, one that reminded her of a bandar's tail. She took this as a good sign; some elves considered bandars to be good luck.

"I think this might be it, Mitul," she whispered. "I can feel it in the aether." Her hands were trembling.

"According to my calculations, this iteration does seem promising." Mitul's expression didn't change, his manner remaining, as always, professional. Unlike her, he never seemed nervous or excited before a trial; he was a constant, steady force in the laboratory, always focused.

"Ready?" She asked.

Mitul nodded. He was standing at a tall desk arrayed with aether measuring equipment, his pencil poised over his laboratory journal. "I am prepared."

You can do it, Rashmi silently encouraged test subject 848. "All right, I'll be releasing the transporter in three...two...one..." She let go of the ring, and in response, the aether within swelled, buoying it up so it hovered in place just above the flower.

"Trial start time captured." Mitul was scribbling away. "Initial aether measurements recorded."

With a soft exhale, the ring began its descent, floating toward the petals of the flower. Rashmi's nerves were swallowed by the hum of aether. She was unable to look away from its pulsing flow that evolved as the transporter moved closer and closer to 848. The cadence picked up with every passing heartbeat until it surpassed the confines of its own structure and began to shift. Rashmi could see the usually gentle bends skipping and taking sharp turns; the flourishing bandar tails were coiling around each other. She recognized this behavior. The aether was forming the patterns that promised to defy the laws of the world.

When the ring became level with the flower petals, she heard Mitul's voice as though from a great distance. "Time of contact marked."

Rashmi held her breath.

The tips of the petals flickered as the ring passed over them. The golden transporter continued to descend.

Another flicker.

And then suddenly the structural integrity of the whole flower gave way, and with a soft pop the entire flower imploded into a lingering outline of dust. A breath later the outline erupted, bursting apart, each little piece of matter zipping outward with extreme speed. The miniature projectiles shot into the ring, pitting the metal, and in some cases slicing right through. The transporter sparked and crackled, the delicate aether filament squealing and then burning out before Rashmi could lift it up and away.

"Trial failed. Test subject 848 disintegrated," Mitul said.

Rashmi sighed, running her fingers along the metal of the transporter, assessing the damage. She had really thought this time it was going to work.

"Of note," Mitul went on, "measurements detected traces of transmuted matter, indicating that 848 responded well to the initial phase of contact."

"Transmutations in preparation for transport?" Rashmi's shoulders straightened and her spirits lifted.

"It would appear so, yes."

"Well then, if that's the case we merely have to provide a more stable environment."

"My thoughts precisely," Mitul said. "I find myself inclined to suggest that we run our next trial with a less turbulent stream of aether. If we increase the diameter of the piping—"

"We'll reduce the turbulence of the initial flow, and decrease the volatility!" Rashmi finished for him. "Mitul, that's brilliant!"

"I believe the hypothesis is quite promising, yes."

This was exactly why they worked so well together. Neither of them was ever discouraged for long. Rashmi had the Great Conduit to remind her that she was on the right path, and Mitul had his belief in the iterative method of research. Though he never questioned her relationship to the Great Conduit, Rashmi had a feeling Mitul didn't put much stock in it. She assumed that, like most vedalken she knew, he subscribed to the unending process of working successively closer to a solution by repeating the previous method with a slight variation. Though she didn't quite understand how someone could find inspiration through that kind of iteration, she never questioned him. It didn't bother her that their philosophy was different; the reason for their motivation didn't matter. It was their optimistic spirit and commitment to their research that bound them. And not a day went by that Rashmi didn't feel fortunate to have found such a gifted research partner and friend in Mitul.

The vedalken looked up from consulting his log book. "As it happens, we have just the piping in the storage room. I'll retrieve it and return shortly." He was halfway across the room before he finished talking. And for her part, Rashmi was already elbow-deep in the ring of the transporter working on repairs.

They were past time for trifling. Though Rashmi tried to ignore its distracting presence, she knew that the circled date on the calendar was rapidly approaching. The Inventors' Fair qualifiers were less than a week away. The Fair was her chance to show the transporter to the world, but more importantly to the judges and benefactors. She would win, of that she was certain, and then she would have patrons and sponsors for her research. She would have the support of the Consulate instead of a dwindling aether supply. Maybe she would even have her own automaton workforce to fill the inquirium. But that was getting ahead of things. It was time for test subject number 849.

* * *

"Test subject number 887 ready." Mitul's voice was hoarse; neither he nor Rashmi had slept in two days. It was the afternoon of Inventors' Fair qualifiers, and they had not yet run a successful trial. This was their last chance. If this trial proved a success, they would have just enough time to package the ring, load it onto a cart, and make their way to the arena in time for their qualifier. If this trial was a failure, it was over.

Rashmi held the ring over the slightly wilted flower. Her arms trembled, not from excitement, but from fatigue. Why had the Conduit brought her to this point if it didn't mean for her to win the Fair? Why had it pushed her toward this just for her to fail? She wanted to scream. But she didn't. At that moment she saw Mitul stifle a yawn, and it stirred something inside her. She couldn't give up, not yet.

There's still one more chance, she reminded herself. She made an attempt to clear her mind of cynical thoughts. She told herself that maybe she and Mitul were meant to struggle right up until the last moment. Maybe this was all part of the pattern the Great Conduit was weaving. Maybe this would be their moment. "All right, here we go," she said, with as much oomph as she could muster. "In three...two...one..." She let go of the ring.

"Trial start time captured." Mitul made a mark in the journal. "And measurements recorded." He rubbed his reddened eyes.

Rashmi tried to assume the role of an objective observer, but as the ring dipped toward the drooping petals of the flower, she found herself once again holding her breath and hoping. It had to work this time, it just had to.

The ring passed over the topmost petal. "Time of contact marked," Mitul said.

The petal flickered. Don't implode. Don't implode, Rashmi pleaded.

Another flicker.

And another.

The ring was halfway down the head of the flower. A stirring started deep within Rashmi's insides. This had to be it. She watched in awe as the patterns opened a pathway through space. Gazing down into the aether she could almost see the hole forming in the fabric of her world. She was sorry she had ever doubted. She could scarcely believe what was happening before her eyes. The entire flower blinked in and out, every muscle in Rashmi's body tensed, and then—

POP! The flower imploded.

Rashmi's insides froze. No. The ring crackled and sparked. No. She heard the filament give way and snap. No! This wasn't what was supposed to happen. This couldn't be.

"Trail failed. Test subject 887 disintegrated," Mitul said.

Rashmi didn't even bother to try to lift the ring up and off the exploding remains of the flower. There was no point salvaging it—it was over. She turned away, unable to watch any more. Vaguely, she heard the ring clatter on the tabletop, the sound ringing in her head like the final bell at academy. The test was over and she had failed.

"Addendum: in the time succeeding the recorded completion of the trial involving test subject 887, continued observation reveals that there appears to be a difference in the way organic and inorganic matter are affected by the aetheric waves of space." Mitul's voice washed over Rashmi like water over an exposed wound.

"Mitul, there's no point in recording anymore." She glanced at the red overdue notices on the far desk. "I should have told you long ago. I'm so sorry, but the inquirium is—"

"Rashmi," Mitul interrupted. It was odd to hear him use her name; he rarely addressed her. "Rashmi." Something in his voice made her turn. "L-look." He was pointing to the corner of the laboratory, his eyes blinking rapidly.

Rashmi followed his finger. There, leaning against the wall inside a small inscribed circle, was the vase. Rashmi gasped. She looked back to the table in the center of the room; only the ring rested there. Her first thought was that it was a trick of the eye. It could be a different vase. But there was no mistaking it; it was the only vase in the whole laboratory. It had passed two iron barriers, a stack of equipment, and Mitul himself, and now it rested gently against the wall, neatly inside the circle intended for the flower.

Rashmi laughed. It was an odd-sounding laugh that snuck up on her. She might have kept laughing, except her heart leapt up into her throat, nearly choking her. She couldn't manage even one full sentence. "Mitul—Mitul—w-we—"

"Yes." Mitul was still blinking rapidly. "We successfully transported inorganic matter across space."

"Ha! We did it!" Heat and moisture pressed against the back of Rashmi's eyes and she ran to her friend, throwing her arms around the tall vedalken's neck. She squeezed. "We really did it."

"As a matter of fact, we did," Mitul said, extricating himself from her hug. "Now, I must focus on recording these results. I cannot allow myself to get swept up in potentially distracting emotions when there is science at hand."

Rashmi laughed again; it seemed the only reaction she was capable of at the moment.

"But do not mistake this for lack of excitement." Mitul offered the smallest of smiles, the slight upturn of the corners of his mouth. "I am quite excited. Oh yes, quite." But he gathered himself, put pencil to paper, and cleared his throat. "Now, here we go: with regard to the most recent trial, it appears the feedback we were observing was generated by the interaction between organic matter and transdimensional space. We iterated upon our design, but we never changed the nature of our test subject." Mitul's focus on the facts seemed to have given him back control of his eyelids.

And the reassuring and familiar sound of his voice returned Rashmi to herself as well. "The Fair!" she cried.

Mitul's focus was uninterrupted. "I will now proceed to document all observable features of the vase to ensure transport was comp—"

"No, Mitul, there's no time!" Rashmi grabbed the transporter off the table. "We have to get to the Fair, to our qualifier!"

"Oh!" Mitul turned, his eyes lighting up. "Oh, yes, you're quite right." He nearly dropped his journal. "I'm experiencing such a rush of adrenaline that I'm barely thinking. I shall conclude documentation when we return. If we pack up now, we should have just enough time to crate the device in the appropriate safety packaging, load it onto the cart, and wheel it through the grounds, which are sure to be crowded and require a reduced speed of transport, for an arrival time at the arena the requested one hour before our scheduled qualifying demonstration."

"Perfect." Rashmi was inspecting the ring. "But we'll need a new filament first. This one's shot."

"It must be due to initial contact with organic matter," Mitul said. "I predict that we won't see that behavior when we transport only inorganic matter."

"Let's hope not." Rashmi was at the workbench peeling back the filigree to access the filament. "I'd rather not entertain the judges with a fireworks display."

"No, I don't suspect that would be well received." Rashmi swore she heard Mitul chuckle as he darted off toward the storage room.

Rashmi ran her fingers over the filigree. There were a few dents and scratches, but nothing that should interfere with the functionality. The functionality that moved matter across the room! "We actually did it," Rashmi whispered. She glanced over her shoulder at the vase. Part of her didn't believe it was really there, but it was. "I should never have doubted." She closed her eyes. There was the Great Conduit, shining brilliantly in front of her. Its warmth enveloped her. She reached for it.

Art by Magali Villeneuve

"We do not have another filament." At the sound of Mitul's voice, Rashmi's eyes shot open. He was stutter-stepping into the room. "We're out. I knew our supply was dwindling. I should have—but there was no time to order. The iterations kept coming. But that is no excuse—this responsibility falls to me. I don't expect that you would be able to forgive my mistake." His twelve fingers were fluttering around his long blue face.

"Mitul, it's all right." Rashmi put her hand on his shoulder. She felt oddly calm. She could feel the guidance of the Conduit, and she knew exactly what they should do. "Crate the device," she said. "We'll take it to the market, get a filament there, and then head back to the Fair. We should still get to the arena in time for our qualifier."

"Oh." Mitul blinked. "Oh, yes." He let out a long breath. "That might very well work."

"It will," Rashmi said. "This is our moment."

* * *

Rashmi shielded her eyes against the brightness. Everything shone in the light of the waning sun: the polished metal automatons, the gleaming architecture, and the streaming banners, ribbons, and festoons that covered the square.

Art by Jonas De Ro

The Inventors' Fair had been built up around the inquirium while they had worked inside these past months, oblivious to all of it. It was as though Rashmi had retreated into her laboratory on one world and exited in another, one that was a giant labyrinth of glistening metal and celebration. But there wasn't time for any of that now. The Conduit was tugging on her with urgency. "This way," she said to Mitul, pointing to the enormous peacock feathers in the distance that marked the entrance to the market. But before she could take a step, an automaton rolled up into her path.

"Welcome to the Inventors' Fair!" it said jubilantly. "The intersection of creativity and genius."

She turned away to sidestep it, wheeling the cart with the transporter around, but just then a second rolled up. "Don't miss the dragster propulsion races at Ovalchase! Get your tickets now."

Rashmi backed away, looking for an out.

"Visit the one-hundred-acre zoo! Animal constructs abound!"

She was being surrounded.

"Perhaps we can find an alternative path through over here." Mitul led the way and Rashmi followed, but so did a handful of automatons.

"Marvel at the living cogwork architecture designed by some of Ghirapur's most storied metalworkers. Isn't it amazing?"

"Yes, yes." Mitul waved the automaton off. "We're in a bit of a hurry, you see."

It wasn't discouraged. "Are automaton showdowns more your style?"

"No. If you'll pardon me..."

The automaton refused to let Mitul pass. "Please remember that gremlins are not permitted on the fairgrounds."

"Of course not, that would be absurd. Now, I must insist—"

"Refrain from carrying in outside aether canisters. And if you witness any suspicious activity please report it to the nearest Honorable Guard or Autom—"

"If you please, get out of our way!" Mitul stiff-armed the automaton. "There." He beckoned Rashmi. "I believe we can now reach the market."

Rashmi hastened to push the cart past the reeling automaton that was telling them to enjoy their time at the Inventors' Fair. She had never seen Mitul so forceful before. She glanced back at him, scrutinizing for a moment; was it possible that he was feeling the tug of the Conduit too? Perhaps someday she could yet convince him that there were forces that his analytical view couldn't explain. Together they picked up the pace, jogging toward the golden filigreed marketplace.

Art by Craig J Spearing

The sun was dipping low, just under the massive feathers of the market gate, as they raced down Ninth Bridge and hurtled into Remi's shop. The interlocking gears on the door squealed and jangled as Rashmi pushed the cart through. The scents of polished metal, sweet rust, and biting grease greeted them—usually a bouquet that would calm Rashmi's nerves, but now it only served to heighten her sense of urgency. She fished the broken filament out of her pocket. "We're looking for the WP series," she said to Mitul. They both knew exactly where to look. The back wall with the perfectly organized and color-coded cubbies. They had purchased most of their supplies at Remi's; he had the best prices and let them stay to watch the underground automaton battles.

"Should be right..." Mitul pulled out a green cubby. "Here."

It was empty.

Rashmi panicked, but only for a moment. "I'm sure he has some in the back. Remi!" she called, catching sight of the tall blue shopkeeper between the shelves.

"Is that? Do I hear...? Rashmi! Mitul! It's been ages!" A grease-stained Remi made his way across the shop, wiping his hands on a rag. He tossed the rag over his shoulder before embracing Rashmi. "Are you here to—"

"We need a filament," Rashmi cut him off. "WP series." Mitul was holding the empty cubby.

"Huh?" Remi looked at the cubby. "Out of that one too? These inventors are worse than gremlins, they're going to run me out of house and home."

"You must have some in the back," Rashmi said, struggling to keep her sense of rising dread in check.

"Afraid not, friend." Remi shook his head. "The back's as cleared-out as the storefront. It's been an endless stampede since the first train arrived from Peema. You'd think we were under attack. Everyone needs a spare this, or a replacement that. I won't be able to restock until the shipment from Lathnu."

"A shipment. When?"

"Oh, round about three days from now."

The last of Rashmi's decorum shattered. "No, no, no. Remi, we need the filament now. Please, you have to have something."

"Wish I did. You know you two are my favorite inventors."

They wouldn't be inventors for much longer if they didn't get a filament. Images of overdue notices swam in Rashmi's mind. Her palms began to sweat. Suddenly the shop seemed too small.

"Ah, well then we must do the next logical thing." Mitul's voice was steady but his twelve long fingers fumbled to push the empty cubby back in place. "We must check the other shops."

"The other shops." Rashmi swallowed her mounting hysteria, but barely. "That's logical. Yes."

"From what I hear, everyone's dry as an empty aether canister," Remi tutted.

But Rashmi was already halfway down the aisle, pushing the cart. She hurried out the door and wheeled straight into the next shop on the bridge. She would check them all if she had to.

"So sorry..."

"Wish I could be more helpful, but..."

"You, know, you're the second person to ask for a WP series today..."

"It's just been such a mad rush..."

"Come back tomorrow..."

"We're all out..."

It seemed that there wasn't a WP series filament in all of Ghirapur.

Exhaustion settled in, and Rashmi collapsed against the railing of the bridge. Mitul walked over from the shops on the other side, his eyes downcast. He exhaled. "It is my fault."

It wasn't, but Rashmi couldn't bring herself to say otherwise. Not right now. She brushed her long hair off her neck as she watched the sun sink below the water in the distance. Their demonstration would be starting any moment, and they would miss it. It seemed impossible that they should be here with the transporter now, so close, yet without the means to complete it.

She was no longer panicked, no longer angry, she was only heartbroken. It was more than just the matter transporter; it was the inquirium too. Without the patrons and sponsors she had counted on from the Inventors' Fair, they would lose everything. It was time to tell Mitul.

Rashmi's stomach grew tight. She found herself staring directly at a passing mail courier automaton so she wouldn't have to look at her friend.

Art by Craig J Spearing

"Mitul, we're going to have to close down the inquirium. We're out of time. It's my fault. I put everything we had into this project and now—" Her voice hitched, she couldn't finish. "I'm so sorry. Working with you these past years has been a true honor." Before he had a chance to respond, she took hold of the handle of the cart and walked away, striding down the bridge toward the sunset.

* * *

The inquirium wasn't where Rashmi wanted to be right now, but she didn't want to be anywhere else in the city either. The thrum of excitement and rush of celebration outside was too much. She dragged the crate up the steps and unlocked the door. She should get to packing; there was no point in delaying.

"So you are alive!" The sound of her friend's voice nearly knocked Rashmi back down the stairs.

"Saheeli?" The bright young inventor was standing in the middle of the workshop, practically glowing in the elegant web of shimmering colorful metal that was wound elegantly around her arms and waist. She looked like the sun on a cloudy day.

Art by Willian Murai

"I've been looking all over for you." Saheeli regarded Rashmi and furrowed her brow. "You look terrible. What are you doing back here? You were just called at the arena."

Tears welled in Rashmi's eyes; she was helpless to stop them.

"What is it?" Saheeli was at her side, one arm wrapped around Rashmi's shoulder. "What happened?"

Rashmi shook her head. "It's over. A broken filament, that's all it took. And there are no replacements. Not in the whole city." She let the tears fall.

"Oh. Shhh, shhh." Saheeli rubbed Rashmi's back. "Come now. You had a damaged piece of metal and you didn't think to call on me?"

Rashmi sniffed. "You?" And then it hit her. "You! You could fix it." Of course Saheeli could. She was a master with metal, working with even the most delicate pieces in her designs; she could fix nearly anything. In Rashmi's panic, the thought of Saheeli hadn't even crossed her mind. Her months-long seclusion had made her all but forget everything and everyone outside of the inquirium.

"Well then, give it here." Saheeli held out her hand, impatient.

Rashmi fished in her pocket for the broken filament, but she stopped herself before handing it over. "There's no point. I'll have missed my demonstration."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Saheeli smiled conspiratorially. "I know Padeem well enough. I'm sure that if I tell her about this aether condenser of yours, she'll be too curious not to want to take a look at it."

"You would do that?"

"It's like you said, the condenser might not be flashy, but it's the kind of invention that others can build on. Who knows what it might be used for someday."

"Actually, I know at least one thing," Rashmi said, unable to contain her excitement. "Saheeli, I did it, we did it. Mitul and I designed a matter transporter, and it works! We moved a vase from one side of the workshop to the other." She paced, pointing to the place the vase had been. "Can you believe it? I don't even know exactly how we did it. The equations seem to indicate that we're working with forces outside the realms of this world. When I look into the aether, I can see it parting to make a pathway, a pathway through infinity. It's brilliant. And it is flashy! It's going to amaze Padeem and the rest of the judges. And it's all thanks to you." She offered the filament to Saheeli. "I'm in your debt, truly."

But Saheeli didn't take the filament, didn't so much as move.

"What is it?" Rashmi asked.

Saheeli dropped her eyes and took a step back. "I'm sorry. I don't want to do this. I don't want to hurt you, my friend. But I can't."

"Can't what?" Rashmi was confused.

Saheeli shook her head, holding up her hands. "I can't help you."

"But you said—"

"You said it was an aether condenser." Saheeli seemed to be getting upset.

"It was. But then we did this. This is so much better, so much more."

"You don't know that. You don't even know how it works. You don't know the possible consequences of what you've designed. It's too dangerous."

Rashmi could barely make sense of what Saheeli was saying. "Of course there are dangers, but we'll run more trials, we'll iterate on it. That's exactly why we need to win the Inventors' Fair. I need the support of the Consulate so we can perfect the design. We're on the very cusp of something here, something amazing that's going to change the world."

"Did you ever consider that perhaps there are changes the world doesn't need?" Saheeli snapped. She brushed past Rashmi and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Rashmi called, her mind reeling, struggling to comprehend what was happening.

"I don't want to hurt you," Saheeli said again as she went. "But I can't help you."

"Wait." For the second time that day, panic gripped Rashmi. "Saheeli, please. I don't understand. I need your help." She hurried after her friend and grabbed her arm. "Please."

Saheeli turned, her cheeks reddened and her eyes hard. "I said, I can't help you. Maybe you're too close to see it, but what you've made here isn't something that should be made."

Rashmi stared at her friend in shock. Her confusion turned to anger. "I thought you believed in innovation without bounds. I thought you wanted to see remarkable things happen. I thought you wanted to help make remarkable things happen."

"Not this." Saheeli pulled her arm free. "I have to go." She walked down the stairs.

Rashmi's anger boiled over. "Then, what? You only believe in innovation when it's things you make? Only when you get all the attention?"

Saheeli's neck stiffened.

"You live your life in the spotlight, Saheeli. Well, it's my turn now. Are you jealous? Are you worried that your invention isn't going to be the shiniest thing at the Fair?"

Saheeli's hands balled into fists, but she didn't turn, didn't slow. Rashmi watched the woman she thought was her friend walk away when she needed her most.

* * *

Saheeli had been automaton dueling with the renegades all through the night. It hadn't helped.

She had come directly to the Fair's main arena—the location for judging during the day, quicksmithing duels by night—after leaving Rashmi's inquirium. Luckily there were plenty of inventors eager to test their creations, because she couldn't wait another moment to sink her automaton's claws into something that she could shatter.

Since her first match, she had pounded through no less than two dozen metallic creations. Many of the remains were still being cleared out of the arena. Now as the sun was rising, she was controlling one of her favorite designs, a streamlined bird, which was set to face off against a brutish green automaton. In her opinion, the towering invention on the other side of the arena looked a bit like one of the giants that occasionally migrated through the city. All the more reason to crush it.

"Let the battle begin!" the announcer called down from above.

The crowd in the stands cheered as Saheeli launched her bird in an attack, aiming for the giant automaton's neck.

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

It hit! A perfect strike. Whistles and hoots resounded as the brute staggered. One more direct hit like that and she would topple it. She grunted in annoyance. This wasn't working. If only one of these inventors would make something that would actually challenge her, something that would take her mind off everything else. She had come here for a distraction, but for the whole of the night all she had managed to think about was the matter transporter, Rashmi's face, and her biting words.

Saheeli looped the bird around for a second go. How dare Rashmi accuse her of being jealous? Envy had been the furthest thing from her mind when her friend had told her about the matter transporter. How dare she? Saheeli sent the bird in for another attack to the neck—but this time the brute blocked. A protrusion of sorts had grown up out of the weak point. Not bad, she thought, silently commended her fellow inventor for the foresight he had put into the design. But she already knew how to circumvent it. She pulled her bird out of its dive and sent it careening upward to gain momentum for a third strike.

She had done the right thing, the only thing she could do. She had a responsibility being a Planeswalker, knowing what she knew about the Blind Eternities. There was no question in her mind that Rashmi's device had potential far beyond what the elf realized. And that wasn't safe, not for Rashmi, and not for anyone else on Kaladesh. She had done the right thing.

With an echoing caw, Saheeli's bird dove in from behind and drove its beak into the back of the giant automaton's neck. The crowd gasped, rising to its feet. The brute swayed like a tall aether spire in a squall, but it didn't fall. Fine. Another blow then. Saheeli pulled the bird out and wound it up for a final strike.

Rashmi had admitted it herself; she didn't understand her equation. She was tearing holes in space without considering the consequences. It was to Saheeli to protect her, to safeguard this world, even if that meant walking away from her friend.

She sent the bird hurtling forward, dodging the swatting, flailing green arms, and slammed it, head first, into the automaton's chest. With a long, low groan, the giant plummeted to the ground, landing on its back with a resounding crash. The crowd cheered.

"That's another point for Inventor Saheeli!" The announcer boomed. "Which puts her at a perfect twenty-five for the night!" More cheers.

Saheeli took a bow, but she was already searching the wings for her next opponent.

"And it looks like that's it for today, fellow battle fans. The Fair will be opening its gates soon and we don't want to be caught squatting in their main arena. I, for one, don't want to see the look on Inspector Baan's face if he finds out we were in here."

The applause died down, and there was a collective shuffling of feet and stretching as stiff but invigorated fans made their way to the exits.

"Thanks for joining us," the announcer said. "Remember to look down to find out where tonight's battle will be."

That was an allusion to the secret renegade code that was used to pass information about automaton battles and the like. Saheeli could easily find out where to go after dark, but she didn't want to wait a whole day. What was she supposed to do until tonight? "Oh, come on!" she called from the center of the arena. "We can squeeze in one more. Who's next?" She glanced around, but no one paid her any mind. The other competitors were clearing out as quickly as they could. The arena was already almost empty. "Cowards," she mumbled under her breath.

If it was possible, she felt more frustrated than she had before she had arrived. This was the first time that a good round of automaton battles hadn't cleared her head. Annoyed, she stormed out of the nearest exit.

The crowd was filling the fairgrounds fast. The gates must have already opened. Saheeli wasn't in the mood for crowds. She wasn't in the mood for anything but another battle. Maybe she could find something at Gonti's. She skirted the busiest thoroughfare and wound her way toward the main gate. She had done the right thing. Hadn't she? The matter transporter was too dangerous. Wasn't it? "It was," she said to herself. "It is."

"That's her!" a small voice sounded from Saheeli's left.

Saheeli cringed and ducked simultaneously. She recognized the tenor of bubbling delight, and she knew exactly what would happen next if she didn't take evasive action. A quick pivot and she was headed the other way, but two steps later she was blocked by a cordon.

"Over there!" The same voice rose above the din of the gathering throng.

Saheeli spun around only to find another cordon. She turned the corner and cursed; more cordons, they were everywhere.

"Excuse me. Excuse me." Someone tapped her shoulder. Saheeli inhaled a long breath, attempting to arrange her features into something that could least pass for non-murderous. She turned. "Yes."

It was a dwarf dressed in a bright blue skirt and vest, holding the hand of an even younger dwarf who was wearing a set of goggles. "My daughter says that you're Saheeli," the older dwarf said.

"Saheeli Rai, famous inventor, brilliant metalsmith, and most renowned luminary of our time," the younger dwarf rattled off the accolades.

Her mother flushed. "Yes, well let's find out if it's her first."

"It is!" The young dwarf beamed, pointing to a picture of Saheeli in her Inventors' Fair autograph booklet. She read from the page, "'Best known for her unparalleled ability to create lifelike replicas of any creature or construct she sees.' Which is really cool." Her eyes widened to near popping as she gazed at Saheeli. "I'm going to be an inventor just like you someday."

The woman who had been trying to hush her daughter finally succeeded. "I'm sorry," she said. "Zara is just so excited to be here. She's been talking about the Fair nonstop for months. Would you mind terribly signing an autograph for her?"

The young dwarf held up her booklet open to the page with Saheeli's picture. Saheeli sighed; she couldn't say no. She took the pen.

"You can sign next to your quote," the young dwarf said. "It's my favorite of all the quotes."

Saheeli scanned the page, finding the quote, and scribbled her name. But her scrawl fell away halfway through as she read her own words. There are times for regulations and rules, but this era of innovation is not one of them. We have to push forward without fear. We have to create without bounds. It's our duty as inventors to make the most remarkable things we can make, to help each other achieve the extraordinary, to change the world. "Well, isn't that something to have shoved in your face?"

"Excuse me?" the dwarf said.

"Oh," Saheeli blinked; she had forgotten where she was for a moment. "I'm sorry. I was just—here you go." She handed back the young dwarf's autograph booklet.

"Thank you." The young dwarf beamed. "Thank you so much!"

Saheeli barely heard her. Her feet were carrying her away with purpose; she knew exactly where they were taking her. Hopefully she wasn't too late.

* * *

Saheeli had never seen a building look forlorn before, but the inquirium did. The antenna seemed to droop and the section that resembled a beetle's head had sagged to rest on the two front legs. Saheeli climbed the steps, steeling herself to knock on the door. She went over in her mind what she would say, how she would say it. She wasn't good with apologies, and in truth, she wasn't yet convinced that she should have to apologize, but something needed to be said—something had to be done—before it was too late. She knocked.

Footsteps on the other side told her someone was coming. The door opened and she saw the blue of Mitul's face. "Mitul. I need to talk to Ra—" Mitul slammed the door in her face.

"All right." Saheeli glowered. "That was fair." She smoothed her skirts. Gritting her teeth against the urge to storm down the stairs, she knocked again. "Fair, but childish." She raised her voice on the last word, knocking harder. "Come on. Let me in! I'm not going to stand here forever."

More footsteps. It was Rashmi who opened the door this time. The elf looked worse than before. Red puffy rings lined her eyes, and dirt and sweat had collected on her face and arms. The last of Saheeli's umbrage melted away. She couldn't bear to see her friend this way. She longed to embrace her, to care for her, but she held back. There was something she had to say first. "I need to explain why I didn't help you." Rashmi refused to meet her eyes. "I was scared. Unsure. What you're doing is dangerous, and—"

"I've heard all this, Saheeli." Rashmi stood straighter. "If you came to lecture me again, please leave." Rashmi made to close the door, but Saheeli swooped in to hold it open.

"You didn't let me finish." She inserted herself between the door and frame. "It is dangerous, yes. But," she continued over Rashmi's nearly audible eye-roll, "it's also exciting. Thrilling, even. It has the chance to change the world...for the better." Rashmi let up slightly on the door. "If anyone can make the next breakthrough in aetherology, it's you. And I want to be there to see it. I want to help." Saheeli held up a perfectly formed filament, which she had woven out of the sturdiest metal she could conjure. "For you," she said. "Padeem promised me she would give you an audience if it works."

Rashmi stared at her, then her eyes slowly shifted to the filament.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" Saheeli said. "Don't you have to run a trial or something?"

Rashmi called Mitul, and together the two inventors operated on the golden ring as though it was the most important patient they ever had. Saheeli watched silently from the corner of the workshop as Rashmi reverently carried a vase to the table in the middle of the room and set it in the center of the ring.

Mitul nodded. "Test subject number one ready," he said.

Rashmi flicked a filigree switch, and the transporter ring whirred to life. Saheeli tensed, holding her breath. She couldn't look, but she couldn't bear to look away. She settled for watching out of the corner of her eye.

"Trial start time captured," Mitul said. "Initial aether measurements recorded."

The ring floated up from the table, and as it did, the vase flickered away.

Art by Nils Hamm

A moment later it appeared on the other side of the room.

Saheeli stared, her mouth gaping in wonder. Her friend had done the impossible. A device now existed that could transport matter through space. Saheeli could only hope that she had done the right thing.

* * *

As they were carried up to the top floor of the judges' apartments, Rashmi gazed out the glass wall of the lift platform. The sun was setting on Ghirapur and the bustle of the day had faded into the quiet strains of evening. A loose stream of aether gently wound itself through the spiraling domes atop the tallest buildings. A low flying crane skimmed the shimmering waters of the canal below. As she watched the city tuck itself in for the night, a calm settled over Rashmi, one she hadn't felt in a long time. She held the golden transporter ring at her side. It seemed impossible that it all should end here, with a private audience with the Enlightened Keeper Padeem. Sometimes the Great Conduit worked patterns that even Rashmi could not interpret. For all the time she had devoted to studying the flow of aether, all the work she had invested in an attempt to demystify its influence over life, she still found that these kinds of moments were the moments she most treasured: when life surprised her, when people amazed her.

"How did you do it?" she asked Saheeli. "How did you get Padeem to agree?"

A devious smile spread across Saheeli's face as the lift's doors breathed open. "A front-row seat at the underground artificer duel next month."

Rashmi nearly tripped stepping off the platform. "The consul Padeem? Watches duels?"

"Of course she does." Saheeli laughed. "Do you care to fill our friend in, Mitul?"

"It's something that not many people know," Mitul said. "No one really expects it of a vedalken, but we can be quite quick on our feet when it comes to it, which makes us excellent duelists."

"You're saying Padeem was an underground quicksmith?" Rashmi gaped.

"The best of her time," Saheeli said. "She could probably still win the night."

"Do—do you duel?" Rashmi asked Mitul.

"Oh, well, you know...I dabble." Mitul suddenly seemed very distracted by the doors that parted to let them into a small lobby. He hurried inside.

Rashmi studied her colleague in a new light. He did look rather nimble, and she could only imagine that his mastery of geometric calculation would serve to give him the advantage in a tactical battle situation. The day was not finished with its surprises yet, it seemed.

"Inventors Rashmi and Mitul to see the esteemed judge Padeem," Saheeli said to an official-looking Consulate functionary standing behind a tall desk.

"One moment." The functionary slipped through a sliding door, leaving the three of them in the lobby to wait.

Saheeli turned to Rashmi, an earnest look in her wide eyes. "I would say good luck, but you don't need it."

"That's thanks to you." Rashmi bowed her head to Saheeli. "Thank you. For all you have done. Endless thanks."

Saheeli shrugged. "It probably could have been handled better. I—I'm sorry." She glanced furtively up at Rashmi from under her eyelashes. "Friends?"

"Always." Rashmi drew Saheeli into an embrace.

Saheeli squeezed her arm. "Now, go show that dueling vedalken the invention that's about to change the world."

"Right." Rashmi clutched her transporter tightly as the sliding door opened and the functionary came back through.

"The consul will see you now."

Rashmi looked to Mitul. "Are you ready?"

He nodded, holding up the vase. "I am prepared." They followed the functionary through the doors. The hallway led to a small chamber where Padeem reclined in an overstuffed chair. Rashmi couldn't look at her without seeing the daring artificer duelist of apparent legend. The thought made her smile.

"Inventors Rashmi and Mitul, the consul," the functionary said.

Padeem nodded. "Welcome."

"You may begin." The functionary extended his arm out to a table that had been set before Padeem, for the purposes of the demonstration, no doubt.

Mitul approached and set the vase on the table, careful to center it perfectly. After he had stepped back, Rashmi moved forward, lifted the transporter ring, and slid it over the top of the vase to rest on the tabletop. Finding herself not quite ready to begin, she exhaled a long steady breath and looked into the Conduit. At first she thought it was gone, but then she understood that she was standing within it, its light all around her. This was the moment she had been chasing for so long. Now that she was here, she realized that she didn't know what would come next. All she knew was that after this moment there would be no turning back. Once they showed Padeem what they had done, the world would never be the same. Perhaps that was enough. Rashmi took a step back and shifted her gaze to the vedalken judge.

Art by Matt Stewart

Padeem rested her chin on the tips of her fingers. "All right, Inventor Rashmi, impress me."

3

Torch of Defiance

By Doug Beyer

A Planeswalker from Kaladesh visited Ravnica to ask for the assistance of the Gatewatch. The consensus was that the Gatewatch should only intervene in the case of interplanar threats, however, and a possible threat to the Kaladesh Inventors' Fair was not deemed a matter for the Planeswalkers. For Chandra Nalaar, though, the plane of Kaladesh is personal—it's her home plane, a world she hasn't been back to since her spark ignited and she took her first planeswalk twelve years ago. Without consulting the others, she has planeswalked back to Kaladesh, back to her home.

* * *

Home was an atrophied muscle. The path back to Kaladesh was covered over with time the way a road gets reclaimed by weeds, and for a moment, Chandra wondered if she even remembered the way. Before she could take a deep, soothing breath, though, she had arrived.

Chandra stood in the center of a plaza of warm brick, reeling in surreal familiarity. Cardamom and incense, welded copper and gear grease, the musk of passing arborbacks, the tang of bandar fur. There were the familiar traces of aether in the air, fresh and open like sun-soaked linen, but with a prickle of action in it. It was the aether smell that told her, finally, that she was home—the raw potential that curled the clouds in the sky, surged in the hearts of airships, and coursed through the city in thick glass pipes.

Art by Jonas De Ro

The last day she had been on this world had hung in the past, interrupted and partial. That day had resumed, except everything looked busier and—taller. Wasn't visiting your childhood home supposed to make you feel bigger?

People swept past her in a customary Kaladeshi hurry. The melody of their voices jolted her. She heard morsels of conversation that could have come right from her own family home—eager predictions about some famous inventor in the Fair, gruff opinions on the merits of this or that airship design, clipped exchanges about onrushing deadlines.

Chandra grabbed her own elbows. She longed to curl up in her childhood hammock, suspended from the walkways of the old mine from before the aether boom, above the machine shop where her parents hunched over some new invention. She wanted to hang there, listening to their voices, as they shaped metal. She longed to just go home, except she was home and it wasn't her home anymore, and she wasn't eleven anymore and she would never have her mother wrap her arms around her—

She growled and stamped her foot. She doused her hands on her thighs and wiped an eye. No.

Somewhere in this crowd was the renegade she sought, the inventor who was in danger—and the rest of the Gatewatch didn't care. Her family had worked against the Consulate when she was growing up, dodging patrols to supply aether to brilliant inventors. She didn't know why this person was so important to her, or why this mission had been the thing to draw her back to Kaladesh. She just knew she needed to find this inventor, and soon.

Ghirapur thrived all around her, a city of thousands of faces. She didn't even know what this renegade might look like. Chandra felt a splinter of that familiar feeling—the feeling of having gotten herself into something without any plan of how to get back out. She felt a tiny urge to about-face back to Ravnica.

A pair of Consulate lawkeepers glanced at her, evaluated her, and moved on—and the reassuring spike of defiance chased away her urge to flee. She instinctively hid a reflexively-made fist, and grabbed a handful of a nearby banner. She put her foot up onto a decorated copper strut, yanked on a hanging Consulate flag, and hauled herself up onto the balcony of the level above.

As she climbed, the city spread out before her. Vehicles and people surged through the streets, gathering for the Inventors' Fair. Glassed-in rooftop gardens rotated, facing the sun's arc. At the city's center, an enormous single spire reached high into the sky, aether-driven airships orbiting it like moths. She wondered if she could ever explain the tangled emotional knot that was Kaladesh, for her. But even if she had a friend here, someone who could understand, she could still never explain—

"So this is your home," said a woman next to her.

Chandra started, then scowled. Standing on the formerly unoccupied balcony next to her was Liliana, leaning her crossed arms on a rail and looking out over Ghirapur.

Art by Jonas De Ro

* * *

A gray-haired man slipped through Ghirapur with a series of sideways moves. He avoided main thoroughfares and stayed off the ticketed Express, zigzags drawing him in and out of parts shops, along aether arteries, and through shadowed courtyards. He snatched his hood around his cheeks, keeping his face hidden from patrols and thopters. No one stepped on his shadow as he made his way closer and closer to the Inventors' Fair.

* * *

Chandra gripped the balcony rail and glared at Liliana. "If you think you're here to convince me to come home, you can just go."

Liliana scoffed. "Wouldn't dream of it. You are home."

"I'm not going back until I find whoever this Baan was looking for." She gritted her teeth, hitching her mother's shawl around her waist. "No matter what you or the others want."

"It's what you want that matters. Damn the others, if they don't see what your home means to you."

"They mean well," Chandra jabbed back. "They just...they wouldn't understand all of this." A hundred explanations of what Kaladesh did mean fought their way to the surface of her mind, but none of them were large or complicated enough. What could your childhood home mean, when it took your childhood away from you? How was home supposed to mean anything at all, when you became who you are by leaving it?

"Tell me," Liliana said. "Maybe I can help."

"You wouldn't understand, either," Chandra said.

"I understand that home can be a source of pain," Liliana said. Her face was a series of unreadable lines. "I understand that Baan is a dull series of regulations in a pretty uniform."

"Baan's one of them. The Consulate. They keep the city running, but they also hate anyone or anything who dares paint outside the lines. Outcasts. Renegades."

"Fun people, in other words."

"I just mean, people like me. And my parents." Chandra put her hands on the railing. A trickle of smoke rose from the wood.

Liliana conjured a violet glow around her fingertips, and her lips widened into a grin. "Then I think it's high time we celebrated your grand return to your hometown."

Chandra cocked an eyebrow. "I'm here to accomplish something."

"We can still look for your precious renegade along the way. But look at you! You're not even enjoying the giant party going on down there. Besides. I think you and I, in this town? Could get ourselves into some deeply satisfying trouble."

Art by Mark Winters

Chandra's own grin came unbidden. "Liliana, you're two centuries older than me. Exactly which of us is supposed to be the responsible one?"

"Let me tell you a secret." Liliana cupped a hand playfully near Chandra's ear. "There doesn't have to be a responsible one."

* * *

The man in the hood wrapped himself in the hum of the Inventors' Fair, and listened. He kept his face and right arm hidden, no longer to dodge the Consulate soldiers or prying eyes of the bright-lensed thopters, but to walk freely among the fairgoers. Inventors would recognize him instantly, of course, and interrupt his work. He couldn't have that. He needed to complete his mission before anyone had a chance to notice him.

He slipped into the flow of the crowd, and he listened, following their words to his target.

* * *

The aether trails in the sky faded from soft eddies of azure and white, to gold and copper, to salmon and violet, and finally to luminous turquoise against sparkling black. Chains of aether-powered lights twinkled to life, and light and music spilled from every doorway in the city. Chandra's and Liliana's search for the renegade had become a series of chats with renegade sympathizers, which had become hours of mingling with inventors in society halls and ballrooms, which had become, somehow, dancing. Chandra found herself in reels with spins and acrobatic leaps, ceremonial dances to hail the achievements of great artificers and pilots, some expressive wriggling that borrowed from her time as a Regathan monk.

Chandra's cheeks glowed. She glanced back at Liliana, who, having spent all of a day on this world, looked irritatingly, perfectly at home. Liliana leaned by a wall of the club with a drink in her hand, quietly launching a full charisma assault on a vedalken in Consulate uniform, looking something like a lion toying with a wounded antelope.

When the vedalken soldier's blue face suddenly flushed to purple, and his smile reversed, Chandra's fight-or-flight reflex kicked in. She hurried over to hear the Consulate man go into accusatory mode.

The vedalken's eyes were thin slits now. "And even if I did know about threats to the Fair," he said, "what business would it be of yours, madam? If you've witnessed something, it's your duty to report it."

Liliana's swagger-turn toward him was elaborate. "Well I think it's your duty to—" And then she dropped a vulgarity so shocking that it would have been the equivalent of tossing her drink into the vedalken's face—which she then also did. Liquid dripped from the man's taken-aback face and dribbled down the straight lines of his Consulate uniform.

Chandra's mouth made an O. She was unsure whether to gasp in horror or burst out laughing.

"Serves him right, eh, Chandra?" Liliana winked at her. "This is my colleague Chandra. A proud renegade sympathizer."

Alarms went off in Chandra's head.

"Renegades," said the vedalken soldier, the way one would pronounce the name of a species of vermin upon finding them residing under the floorboards. He mopped his face with a scarf, and reached into his pocket for something. "You two," he said. "You're going to come with me."

When Chandra saw what the Consulate vedalken had produced from his uniform—a simple pair of restraints, jewel-like in their filigreed artistry–the rage appeared. Her hair became fire. Her fingers became a fist. She was eleven years old again and riding a rising wave of fury.

The soldier made a startled face at Chandra's hair display, and that might have been motivation enough. But it was when he sneered, "Hold out your wrists," that Chandra's fist arced around and collided with his jawbone in one fluid motion. The man's face swung around to face the wall of the nightclub, a tooth ricocheted off the wall, and he slumped to the floor in a heap.

Liliana laughed as a kind of applause, like someone watching dominoes topple in sequence. She raised her glass.

Chandra felt the faces of everyone in the club turning to her. "Let's get out of here," she said.

"But don't you want to show this crowd what else you're capable of? Give this goon what's coming to him?"

"Let's go, now!"

Chandra hopped a guardrail and ducked through the back of the nightclub. She pushed through the back door, with Liliana following her into the alley. They dodged past two inventors who rumbled their automatons at each other—one device fanned its intricate copper feathers while the other spun on a gyroscopic wheel.

* * *

It was dark by the time the man in the hood found the marks he was looking for. A line of young people hurried out of the shadowed stands at Ovalchase, the copper legs and grippers of their not-particularly-legal automatons sticking out from the packs on their backs. Renegade inventors.

He intercepted them, taking care to look carefully casual. He kept the long coils of his silver hair hidden under the hood, but he offered his hand—not that one, the other one—in such a way as to show off a Leaking Spire symbol hidden on the inside of his glove.

A dwarf woman noted the Leaking Spire and shook, meeting the symbol with her own. "I'm afraid we're drained tonight, friend."

"Not looking for aether," he said. He used a subtle spell to scan the contents of her pack. Her automaton had a listener module inside it. Perfect. Now he just needed to keep her talking. "I'm looking for an associate. Hoping you might know where her little demonstration is planned for tomorrow."

"Lot of demonstrations going on. You got a name?" She was trying to make eye contact, to see his face. Appropriately cautious.

His information was partial, but that fit the narrative that he was a cautious renegade anyway. "She said not to use names. I'm just supposed to meet her. You haven't heard about this?" Meanwhile his next spell did its work. The little metallic listener module obeyed his commands, prying itself out of her device. It floated silently out of her pack and into his jacket pocket.

"Sorry," she said with a shrug. "Don't know who or what you're talking about."

But he knew she was an associate of his target. He smiled expansively in apology. "Very sorry. I'll stop troubling you."

"No harm done," the dwarf said. "How can we contact you if we hear something about your friend? What do you go by—?"

He turned and waved. "Have a good evening."

He gathered his hood around him again and walked on. He glanced down at his hand—that hand—in which he held the small, ornate copper module. As he walked, he willed it to activate, and as its gears rotated, it told him everything it had heard—conversations, times, dates. And a location.

* * *

Every time Chandra and Liliana saw a patrol they turned a corner, and each turn brought them on a twisting tour of the city. They ducked through a market tent and sprinted up a set of elegant stairs. They looked down out of a window, and below them was a quiet alleyway, out of the way of guard routes.

"Down there," Chandra said. Liliana's disapproval was evident, but they skidded down a set of ladders into the alley.

They caught their breath, leaning on opposite walls. Shafts of daylight scraped the tops of the buildings. The crowds had begun to reappear for the day.

"I'm about done with this 'breathless racing through the city' thing." Liliana dabbed her brow ruefully. "I am more of a 'dramatic strut' person."

But Chandra was just looking at the mosaic on the wall beside her.

Art by Greg Opalinksi

The mosaic was chipped and worn. The inventor depicted in the round frame looked off to one side, his goggles on his forehead. He looked as kindly as ever. Gently amused, the way he would look at her. Chandra found a chip of color in the dust of the road, picked it up, and tried to press it back into place, but it wouldn't stick.

Liliana stood at Chandra's side, looking at the mosaic.

"This was my father," Chandra said. "Kiran."

"You've got his nose. And his goggles."

"He and my mother were both great inventors. They were killed when I was a child."

"I'm sorry. By whom? The Consulate?"

Chandra squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "By a psychopath in a uniform. Baral. My parents died because of him. Because he hated me. Because they tried to protect me."

Liliana was looking at her with curious interest. Chandra wished she wouldn't.

"That's not your fault. It's his."

"I shouldn't have come back here. Why did I come back here?"

"Because you feel you owe them. We all have to face the choices we made when we were younger." Liliana looked at the mosaic and wiped a streak of dust from the portrait. "Perhaps we should look up this Baral of yours."

"This place...this is where I learned to expect tragedy. Where I learned to be suspicious of people."

"It's also where you learned to stand out. Where you learned to be dangerous."

"You say that like it's a good thing."

"Most people are content to take life as it comes. The world tells them they're weak, and they agree. They eat disappointment, let it rot inside of them, and then they lie down and die. The rest of us? We learn how to refuse. How to spit and throw things. We learn how to survive. You're a survivor, Chandra."

Chandra looked into the eyes of her father. She grasped the hem of the shawl, her mother's shawl, that she wore around her waist.

Liliana smirked. "If Baral hated your family that much, we should find out if he's still around, just to be safe. And besides, if we ran into him, you could look him in the eye, instead of that portrait, and tell him what you think of him. You deserve that."

Art by Cynthia Sheppard

"I don't know," Chandra said. "Baral probably thinks I died that day."

"Then just imagine the look on his face when he realizes you didn't. When he realizes you survived."

Chandra cheered at little, thinking of that.

Liliana looked her in the eyes then, and her face was serious. "When you burn him to cinders."

Chandra jerked her head back in shock, but at the same time, a dark thrill dared to roll through her chest. Baral had killed her father in front of her. And she knew that Baral commanded the soldiers who lit the fires that destroyed their village, that must have killed her mother. Her entire family lost, because of one man. How satisfying it would be to see him burn.

"If he's still alive," Chandra said, "I swear he's going to pay for what he did."

Liliana's voice was a low whisper. "It's only right to pay back the pain he caused you."

"It's only right," Chandra murmured, and her hair caught fire.

Art by Magali Villeneuve

"That's them!" two uniformed men shouted from one end of the alley, and rushed toward the two Planeswalkers. Spotted.

Chandra made to sprint in the other direction, but Liliana grabbed her. "We don't have to run," the necromancer said, looking evenly at the guards. "There's another way to end this chase."

"No. We don't do that."

"We do what it takes," Liliana said, her words underscored by the blast of a train's whistle a couple streets over.

Chandra shook off Liliana's hand. She looked at the two men, and cast a swirling blast of flame. But instead of slamming into the Consulate guards, the spell splashed onto the brick floor, spreading into a wall of fire that spanned the alley's width. The guards stopped short.

She looked at Liliana. "Don't tell me what to do," she said. "Come on. Got an idea."

They emerged on a main thoroughfare. The Aradara dawn train was enormous, yet sat balanced elegantly in a single groove in the bricks, sunlight shining off its polished wood flanks. Riders hurried into doors all along its winding length. Chandra ran and stepped up, putting her hand in the way as the doors tried to close.

She and Liliana boarded as the train hissed to a start. Through the windows, they could see the Consulate guards giving up the chase and receding in the distance.

A complicated mechanism at the entrance clattered at them for tickets. Chandra slammed her fist into the mechanism, cratering it. It stopped clattering.

They sat. Chandra leaned her head against glass, watching the buildings of her childhood rattle past. Neither Planeswalker spoke.

* * *

The train lurched and brakes squealed. Chandra grabbed her seat and stood up, only to get slammed into the seats in front of her. The train's whistle blared repeatedly, and the wheels locked underneath them, and red warning lights flashed along the ceiling of the car.

Chandra looked through the windows as the train heaved. Outside—a display of constrained chaos. A squad of special Consulate inspectors waved crowds into designated zones. In the distance, burst aether pipes billowed scintillating gases into the air, and airship crews dropped dragnets to round up stray thopters. Whole buildings had gone dark, cut off from their aether supply. Fairgoers chattered and pointed skyward excitedly, but whatever had happened had seemingly already come and gone.

A disruption. The aftermath of some kind of aerial display. It had to be the work of the renegade—the one Dovin Baan was worried about.

An announcement squawked over the train's pipes. "This train is making an unscheduled stop. Please remain in your seats—"

"Let's go," Chandra said to Liliana over her shoulder, and dashed past several seated passengers to an exit door.

"—until instructed by an Aradara conductor or Consulate official. Thank you."

Chandra hot-punched the door handle. The handle mechanism vanished in a muted burst of fire, leaving a glowing-hot melted hole. She gave a kick and the door buckled open. The street still whooshed by.

"This could be the renegade," Chandra said. "Has to be."

Liliana nodded, and they leaped. Their feet hit the pavement before the train had completely halted. All around, Consulate guards were trying to herd people away from the direction of the disruption. Chandra plunged into the crowd, nudging through a steady tide of bodies that were trying to move away from the emergency as they were trying to get close to it.

"Chandra," Liliana said. Something had caught her eye.

"What?"

"There. In the hood."

Art by Daarken

Chandra followed her eyeline. A figure crisscrossed through the crowd expertly, keeping his face carefully hidden by a dark hood. He hadn't noticed them. He cut a path around the restricted area, keeping the source of the disruption in sight.

"Conspicuously inconspicuous, don't you think?"

Chandra nodded firmly. Their renegade. They had to warn him. "Hey!" she called out. "Hey you!"

Either he didn't hear, or "Hey you!" was exactly what the Fair-disrupting renegade inventor didn't want to have yelled at him across a crowd full of officials. In either case, he dashed away from them, through a bank of onlookers and around a Consulate checkpoint.

Chandra and Liliana gave chase, catching up to him only once he stopped to accost an older woman.

Art by Raymond Swanland

The man's hood was down now, revealing a headful of gray locks. His right hand, emerging from his sleeve, was a metallic claw, which he pointed at the woman.

They had caught up to the man, emerging out of the crowd behind him. But it was the woman who commanded Chandra's attention. She had auburn hair like Chandra's, but darker, and now with wisps of gray. She wore welding goggles and carried a handheld welder, and glared at the claw-handed man.

Chandra's heart stopped and hot tears sprang to her eyes. She couldn't figure out how to say anything.

"I've found you at last, Renegade Prime," the man said, aiming his metal hand at her as if he were pointing a weapon. "Do you think your little spectacle is going to matter to my Fair?"

The woman sneered at him. "We'll stop you, Head Judge. If not today, one day soon."

Liliana grabbed the man and spun him around to her. She uttered a name that Chandra didn't recognize, with a disgust she didn't understand:

"Tezzeret."

And then, gaping at the woman with the hair like hers, Chandra finally found a word of her own. She coaxed it to the surface of her mind out of a sea of shock, and finally managed to breathe it out loud:

"...Mom?"

4

Renegade Prime

By Mel Li

Chandra Nalaar first left her home plane of Kaladesh when her Planeswalker spark ignited, vaulting her from imminent doom at the hands of Lieutenant Baral to the fire monasteries of Regatha. Now she's returned to try to save a mysterious renegade from arrest, only to stumble upon someone she'd thought dead for years—her mother, Pia.

* * *

"I killed your daughter today, Pia." A low voice floated in through a heavy veil of sleep and a splitting headache.

She forced her eyelids open, but was met only by darkness. Stiff vocal cords crackled words through a dry throat. "What—?"

"Just a little thing, that one." His words were oddly clipped and slow, his breathing heavy as furnace bellows. "Barely taller than my blade." The voice chuckled without humor—a low rumble that Pia could feel through the door between them.

The darkness resolved itself slowly into blurs, then thick smears of light. Her stiff hands reached out and found the cool, curving surfaces of filigreed walls. Attempts to rise to her feet proved premature.

"Of course I didn't forget you through all this...excitement. Here, I brought you this."

CLANK. A piece of metal clattered to the floor somewhere in front of her.

"Go on. A memento for what you missed," the voice said.

She reached out a tentative hand to the object. A flat fragment, completely melted on one side and deeply etched on the other. Lightweight. Cold, and warming only slightly under the warmth of her touch, but with deep, precise carvings on the intact side. A titanium alloy prized for use in their renegade airship engines for its formability and heat resistance—though this piece was nothing more than slag on one side.

"Do you recognize it?" the voice inquired too eagerly.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out some of the symbols, and traced the rest with her hands. A stamped swirl of motion beneath a pointed spire. Pia knew this symbol—it felt like yesterday that she and Kiran had come up with it as they left Ghirapur. A leaking spire, a symbol for the renegades, for the Ghirapur they wished they could come back to. But what was this piece? Her fingers danced over the engravings, scanning its surface. And stopped.

Below the insignia, the letters "K.N.," scrawled in the messy but deliberate hand of a craftsman who had separated from his tools. She knew exactly what it was now—a piece of Kiran Nalaar's final project.

Chandra's vent pack.

Muscles between her ribs tightened, and a sudden rush of blood filled her chest with heat. Her hands went limp and dropped the insignia.

"Oh look!" The voice beamed on the other side of the cell door. "Of course you do.

"There's not much I'd care to recall about these things," the voice continued. "Though I do recall her gaze. Shifting around the crowd, unable to stare back at me. Cowardly. Defiant."

Her senses had now almost completely returned. The blurred lights came from the aether pipes in the ceiling of a stark prison cell with a grated door. She had been taken prisoner as the Consulate had ambushed her family in the village outside of Ghirapur. This was not the reality she'd hoped to awaken into. Go back. Be a dream. And that voice—the voice was so familiar...

"But then I realized," the voice went on with genuine enthusiasm, "she was looking for something. Or, someone perhaps?"

Oh yes. She knew that voice. The voice of the man who had hunted her family: Captain Baral.

"She was looking for you, Pia."

The air in her chest heaved out of her in a peal of outrage, though for whom she couldn't tell. Her hands flew to the grating, grasping at Baral's silhouette though he stood easily outside of her reach. Shoulders and fists flew against the cell door. Baral stared back at her, his masked face impassive.

"Am I the one who deserves your contempt?" he asked. "Wasn't it you who should have arrived to save her? To offer her some final comforting words?"

Of course. Why wasn't I there? something demanded inside of her.

He left without another word, as he would each time.

As his footsteps faded, she was suddenly very, very alone. Her Kiran, her Chandra, the threads of all of their lives once so tightly bound now drifted inexorably away from her in time and space. Their world, once so large and full of life, was now this cell.

Baral returned the next day, and the next. Soon a week had passed.

"She was looking for you, Pia."

The words had just become sounds to her now—recognizable though willed into meaninglessness. She steeled her nerves to speak to him for the first time.

"Don't you have better things to do than to hound a grieving widow? I have nothing left for you to take. You've won—can't you leave me alone?"

"Nalaar, our city has always defined itself through its progress. We all make sacrifices to put its welfare above our own." Baral said.

"All of us," he continued with a sharp edge entering his voice, "except the selfish few, who dare to put their interests above the city. It...pleases me to bring your kind to justice. To make you regret every shred of that fatuous defiance."

Pia raised her chin to him with a cold, pitying smile. "Then you've proven me wrong, Lieutenant. I do have something left, and it will never be yours."

He laughed, though there was a shrillness there that had not been there before, and departed down the corridor of cell doors.

It was nearly another week before he returned again.

"She was looking for you, Pia," Baral said, as he had so many times now.

Pia responded slowly, refusing to return his gaze. "And I'll return for her, for all those out there, so they know what you've done. For you, Lieutenant."

Her hands were strong and steady now, strong enough to hurl the tiny filigreed aether lamp from her cell with alarming speed and accuracy straight through the cell grating toward Baral's face.

He raised an elbow with an instinctive grunt as the lamp hit his face and dislodged his mask with a clanging reverberation. A brilliant blue glow flared to life and encircling his body, filling the Dhund's hallway with light. It disappeared mere seconds after it formed, leaving a series of dancing spots in Pia's vision. It was far too bright and volatile to be any form of aether. No—it was something else entirely.

"You're...a mage?" Pia gasped. Her own daughter's pyromancy aside, she'd never known another mage. Magic and magic users were not just scarce, they were regulated and watched more closely than aether itself.

A long, low hiss emanated from the other side of the door. It was a sound so much smaller, so much more human than it had been inside of that mask. Pia rushed forward to the cell grating and peered out.

Baral's unmasked gaze snapped upward and their eyes met. Beneath the mask a mass of thick scar tissue wound its way across his features, parts of it still raw and red. The strong, some might even say "handsome" lines of his had face scattered and melted away.

"Your...what happened to you?"

Art by Anthony Palumbo

Baral paused as he reattached the clasps of his mask. "Fate is rarely fair, Nalaar." She watched the tensed, distorted muscles of his face labor through the words with reluctant fascination. "The materials that shape what we become are fixed the moment we are brought into this world. The fortunate of us will be born heroes. But there are a number of us who will be born malformed—dangerous aberrations to the course of nature. Perhaps they might even look and act like the rest that can threaten us from the shadows."

Mask secured, he carefully draped his hood over his head. "Myself, I accept my nature—I'll not hide or let others hide from the sentences they've been given. This is my destiny, to root out these hidden dangers, expose them, and bring them to justice."

Any traces of concern melted away. "Destined to wrestle with your own demons by hunting down children?"

"Children?" He barked out a humorless laugh. "Of course. Who better to misuse their abilities for selfish or misguided purposes. Besides, the years make little change to natural criminal dispositions, as you yourself evidence."

His voice became quiet, and he leaned in toward the grating in an accusatory whisper. "You asked what happened. Your child. Your child happened, Nalaar. This—" he pressed his masked face to the grating and dragged his fingers over the sides of the mask, "this is the work of your child."

Pia leaned in as close as she could to the grating. "A mother couldn't be prouder."

Baral slammed the grating shut with a force that sent Pia reeling backward. Cold determination tamed her fury. Now alone in the velvety darkness of the Dhund cell, she closed her eyes and listened to the staccato of her heartbeat's slowing...

...And began to plan.

* * *

Art by Tyler Jacobson

Years later and far from the Dhund, Pia Nalaar opened her eyes and blinked in the sunlight as she wiped her goggles clean on the back of a well-worn glove.

Those years had flown by as Pia had rallied a growing contingent of inventors, tinkers, artists—citizens from all over Kaladesh—devoted to uncovering and protesting the Consulate's increasingly tight grip over the city and its vital aether. "Renegades," as the Consulate called them, born from a headstrong passion to defend and celebrate the spirit of the home they had built together.

A select group of these renegades had gathered today on one of the district's many ornate, swirling rooftops high above the ground. Below them, the city was a living, moving thing, full of scintillating streams of motion formed by the shining brass of the constructs hurrying below. Banners and announcers loudly trumpeted the Inventors' Fair below, whose exhibits sprawled over the plaza in a dazzling array of shapes and colors. And in a matter of minutes, the renegades too would unveil their own unauthorized exhibit in the fairgrounds.

A loud POP and the acrid smell of smoke caught her attention. Pia glanced over her shoulder just in time to see the young inventor's apprentice Tamni yelp and nearly lose her balance on the roof's ledge.

Pia grabbed Tamni's arm to steady her and glanced down—the apprentice's nearly finished thopter was consumed in orange flames, the brass sagging and warping.

Pia swiftly covered the flames with her glove and tossed it to the far corner of the ledge to cool. "Nothing more than a little fire. Anything I can help with?" she asked Tamni with a raised eyebrow.

Tamni hastily unfurled blueprints and fumbled with an array of measurement tools laid out in front of her. "Everything's all in the right place, isn't it? I checked everything earlier, I promise! I know we're running out of time...but I can do this!" She bit down on her lower lip while frantically scanning the diagram.

Slag, she's right—It's almost time! Pia said to herself. But she shook the thought away and put a reassuring arm around Tamni. "It's fine—they asked you to be here. I'm sure you've done this a hundred times before!"

"...I, uh, you don't really mean a hundred right? I mean I can figure it out..."

Pia stared blankly at her.

"I'm sure I can! I mean, I was sure?" Tamni shuffled her feet, embarrassed. "I might've...exaggerated my experience to get here."

Art by Ryan Pancoast

Pia mentally applied the palm of her hand to her forehead.

"...I heard Renegade Prime was leading this! I had to see!"

Pia could hear the others around them shift impatiently. She flashed them a confident smile and waved her signal—we'll get through this, just give us a moment.

Pia raised Tamni's chin and channeled the memory of her father's best steely parental glare. "You'll be fine, but we'll need to be fast. Remember what we've learned before—a quicksmith's creations cannot tell us what's wrong unless we pay attention to them.

"These tools," she pointed at the aetherometer, pressure gauges, periodicity vanes, "give us just once piece of what we need to know. "These tools," she touched Tamni's hands, "know many different parts of the machine from experience and intuition. They sense pressure, heat, movement, size, all at once. Go ahead, give it some power."

Tamni nervously applied some aether to the machine—the side propellers spun to life, but the back rotor remained still.

"Listen. What do you hear?" Pia said.

The sound of the rotor was a familiar high-pitched whine and regular clicking of gears. Tamni pressed her ear to its filigreed side. Beneath the normal rhythms, an unfamiliar bass tone lurked in the background. "Something's off in there, rotating out of sync."

Tamni laid her palm against the back vent. Something tapped back slowly, out of sync with the rest of the vibrations. A stray aether tube had jammed itself in the gearbox and broken, leaking volatile aether out of the machine that had caused the rotors to overheat.

"Now when we reform the metal," she encouraged Tamni, "we must pay close attention to its motions; the filigree formed by blooming aether onto metal is a complex and slightly volatile reaction." Pia opened the valve on her aether glove and guided Tamni's hand with her own.

"But you'll learn its patterns even if you don't understand it completely," Pia told her. "Listen to its movements and bend to it as it bends to you. Things will not always be as you want or need them to be, but we must continue to shape them as best we can, and they will reveal their best forms to us."

Tamni bobbed her head eagerly. "Of course, yeah—I wish they'd taught us this stuff at the workshop!"

Those are hard-earned lessons taught by time, Pia thought to herself wryly.

The dull, oxidized metal curled and writhed around the bright glow of aether. It split into a network of glowing blue tendrils, pulsing like a living thing, revealing a bright new surface as it cooled.

Tamni watched a piece of the brass curve inward on itself, and a halting sweep of her aether torch led it into its correct place. The rotor whirred to life, lifting the tiny new thopter off the ground on freshly formed wings.

The young inventor let out a long sigh.

Almost done, now it was Pia's turn.

Goggles down, aether valve opened, the cool tingle of aether entered the tips of Pia's quicksmithing glove. From the other side of the roof, a brass cylinder was tossed her way and landed with a satisfying thump in her glove. A salvaged engine cylinder—this would do just fine.

Her deft hands flew over its surface with gentle pressure as the aether slowly released from her gloved fingertips, the brass wrapping hungrily around the exuded aether in intricate geometric shapes. The movements of the metal were rapid and unpredictable as the aether curled around it.

Pia's mind raced, her designs changing and adjusting by the second to the wild motions of the aether. Soon she had formed a center cavity, encasing a vial of aether that would power multiple rotors, then diaphanous filigree wings and fins for navigation, and finally appendages that could clutch its payload. As she completed her construction, it began to inflate and solidify from within like the wings of an insect after emerging from its chrysalis. Soon the air vibrated with the furious hum of a new thopter's wingbeats.

Art by Svetlin Velinov

A city clock chimed the time below them, and the spired roofs around her soundlessly rotated into their new positions to optimally accommodate the late afternoon's foot traffic.

Right on time.

A heavy, callused hand clamped down on her arm. Pia turned to see a heavily built older man in the brightly polished brass and gold uniform of a Consulate lieutenant. Or at least, what passed for one at first glance.

"Venkat!" she exclaimed, planting a fist into his right shoulder. "For the—you can't go around creeping up behind people when you're in that!"

"Means that the uniform works though, wouldn't you say?" Venkat said, not bothering to suppress an impish grin as he tried to shake the numbness out of his arm. Once a high-ranking commander of the Consulate guard forces, his dissent against tightening regulations on those citizens in the Weldfast he was charged to protect had pushed his obedience to the breaking point. He appeared unexpectedly at the doorstep of Pia's workshop nearly a year ago—a location that he'd kept hidden over his many years of Consulate service.

"Besides, I'm just one of many wise enough to place their trust in you," Venkat added, tilting his head towards the gathered crowd on the roof.

"And my trust in scoundrels like you," Pia said with a smile. A swell of pride swept through her as she surveyed the familiar faces in the crowd—like her, they were respected artisans, visionaries, creators. For all the world it could have been a midday afternoon spent talking around the workshop's tables, the air full of conversation and the smell of brewing tea. They'd shared the weight of the Consulate's tightening restrictions together, pooling together their dwindling supplies of vital Consulate aether that kept the bustling workshops, kitchens, and infirmaries of their district humming.

The renegades raised their hands to her in the ready signal—it was time.

"My friends and neighbors!" Pia called out to them. "Today we're here with a purpose—to speak up about what we've seen and to seek answers for what's been done."

The faces ahead of her nodded solemnly. Though they had all carried the burden of scarce aether, they shared the outrage for "what's been done" to Pia and her family.

"Today is a day of celebration for many," she said, sweeping a hand across the cityscape below. "Since it was created, the Inventors' Fair has always put our city's innovative spirit at the forefront. But for many of us, this year's celebration has become something very different. We found the Fair full of more and more pet Consulate projects in aether routing, security...weaponry!" Growls bubbled up from the crowd, and fists were raised.

"And at the same time, we found ourselves targeted by the very government that has sworn to protect us!" Nodding heads stared back at her from the crowd.

"They've bounded off the skies themselves to prevent you, Nadya and Kari, from gathering our own aether!" The two aerowrights locked eyes with each other and raised their fists together in unison.

"And what about the Maulfists' foundry? The Consulate took their aether and the foundry now lies powerless and vacant!" Three heavily outfitted renegades raised their hammers to Pia.

"Viprikti, your family was forced to leave your home when aether was removed from entire city blocks of the Weldfast!" A rangy older man pulled his goggles down over his eyes solemnly.

"The missions of our leaders have turned away from assisting citizens and toward sustaining their own interests. But now, my friends, my renegades, we deliver our response. You've all generously given your contributions to make this possible, and I'm proud to present it to the rest of the city. Let us be as proud, unafraid, unyielding as those who believe they can extinguish our spirits!"

Pia swiped her hand downward, and four goggled renegades signaled back. Crouching over the filigree ledge, they hurled their thopters down into the plaza below.

The machines dove through the air to opposite ends of the plaza, nearly a hundred in number. They lined themselves up into a massive column of glittering metal over the tents of the fairgrounds that rivaled the height of the city's tallest buildings.

A musical hum of mechanical wings filled the air, and the faces in the tents below snapped upward to the sight. Fairgoers grinned and pointed at the spectacle, while Consulate automata and human guards poured into the street.

As the metal of the thopters heated, their colors changed through yellows to greens to rich purples and blues, an orchestration of color and shape like a mechanical aurora. They spiraled around one another and reformed their column into a tapered cone over a swirled line—the leaking spire.

Inventors and citizens alike in the crowd cheered their approval—a stunning display worthy even of notice by the judges. The thopters began to gently descend toward the ground, like stage actors taking a final bow. Beneath them, scores of Consulate automatons gathered, hands outstretched.

From the rooftop above, Tamni gripped the edge of the railing with white knuckles.

"All part of the plan," Pia reassured her, putting a hand on her shoulder and flashing a smile at Venkat.

Hovering just over the automatons, the mass of thopters emanated a bright blue flare as they released their aether in a long pulse. The sudden rush of energy flooded into the identical automata, creating sparks of concentrated aether. They fell together in ringed rows, like so many dominoes.

"Perils of mass production..." Venkat whispered to Pia with a grin.

A lively, impersonal voice resounded through the loudspeakers below: "Good afternoon, citizens! This is a routine test of the emergency notification system. This level of the fairgrounds is now officially closed. All foot traffic and trains will be rerouted from this area as we conduct our maintenance. We thank you for your attendance and we hope you've enjoyed your time here today!"

Pia nodded at her rooftop companions.

"You should have more than enough time to return to the Weldfast before the guards return. Stay safe, and if any trouble occurs, use your distress signal and Venkat will be here to help you."

The others grinned and nodded back at her, exchanging embraces and congratulations as they departed. They scampered down the sides of the tower, though not before leaving their mark.

Art by Viktor Titov

Pia swung down from the rooftop onto a window ledge, her nimble artisan's hands easily finding handholds in the ornate walls. With a flying leap, she cleared the ledge from one building to the next before clambering down a garden trellis and into the streets below.

Something wild and reckless coursed through her blood as she dashed through the city, green sashes and gray-streaked hair streaming behind her.

In the shadows of the tall spires across the plaza, a tall cloaked man suddenly began weaving swiftly through the crowd, with two others following close behind.

* * *

The soft soles of Pia's boots carried her noiselessly over the pavement as she reached the steps of the Aether Hub at the edge of the Weldfast. Here she would have no problems disappearing into the neighborhood's many side streets and the tall, winding sculptures that decorated its public spaces. Her face split into a proud grin.

From behind her, a heavy hand clamped down on her arm. Even through her sleeve, it seemed to emanate an icy chill that pulled the warmth from her skin.

"Venkat, please, I asked you—"

She turned to see not Venkat, but a tall, cloaked man whose orange face markings identified him as the Fair's Head Judge. The hand that gripped her arm was a massive claw of dark metal that even she didn't recognize as it disappeared into the man's sleeve. Flanked by two Consulate automatons, his ornate armor echoed their patterns and colors: bright, polished Consulate gold and brass. Beside him, the stately vedalken Minister of Inspections himself, Dovin Baan. And an elf, tall and green-eyed, looking from one side to the other in utter confusion.

"I've found you at last, Renegade Prime," the cloaked man said, aiming his metal hand at her as if he were pointing a weapon. "Do you think your little spectacle is going to matter to my Fair?"

His Fair?! Pia seethed. This is our city!

"We'll stop you, Head Judge. If not today, one day soon," she fired back at him.

A pale woman clad in dark flowing silks and a glinting golden headpiece appeared opposite the Head Judge. "—Tezzeret," she hissed.

His head snapped up. Teeth appeared. "Vess," he returned, low and smoldering with anger.

Then another figure, heavily armored and out of breath, appeared next to the woman. She pushed a mop of wild, flame-colored hair back from her face—

A tide of memories washed over Pia.

...Chandra?

Older but unmistakable. Her little girl, now even taller than Kiran had been. Clambering with bubbling laughter and monkeyish speed up onto her parents' shoulders as they strolled through the Greenbelt's gardens. Her warm palm pressed against Pia's in the market, before rushing away to explore on her own. So eager to be part of the causes that she knew her parents had devoted their lives to despite—

Despite the danger.

"...Mom?" A voice, tiny and frail, and not at all like herself. An ember swelled in the corner of her eye, was caught by the wind, and twirled away.

A prison cell. A fallen mask. A melted metal insignia. A humorless rumble of laughter.

Pia shook her head, as if to dislodge the memories from her mind.

She could leave now. Make a run for it and disappear into the familiar streets.

But what about Chandra?

What if they brought her back through whatever hell she'd seen in the arena, with that man who had gladly torn both of their lives apart?

Consulate soldiers materialized between them, forming a wall of flesh and metal with Pia, Dovin, and Tezzeret on one side and the pale woman, the elf, and Chandra on the other.

Chandra plowed into the wall of armored soldiers, yelling something that Pia couldn't quite make out over the din of metallic footfalls. Her daughter offhandedly sidestepped an oncoming swipe from a filigree automaton, and inundated a crowd of the machines with a generous bath of flames. The heat washed over Pia's face like a breaking wave.

A veil of a fierce maternal pride blurred the scene. She wiped heat-stung eyes.

"The pyromancer," Baan frowned, his voice clipped and precise. He pointed a long, slim finger at the contingent of guards at his side, "Take care of this, if you please. Isolate and contain. Gearhulks in the front line—I will see no injuries on my watch. Be mindful, she is rash."

No! Pia screamed from the confines of her mind at Chandra. Get back! Don't let them take you again. Please!

Chandra bellowed a familiar obscenity and threw a punch that blasted a gearhulk back in flames.

"Ah yes." Baan cocked his head to the side. "She is also fond of...creative anatomical descriptions."

Pia's jaw dropped. Had she overheard Kiran saying that...?

A line of heavily armed guards broke away from Dovin's side and began to close in around the oncoming Chandra as she pushed further into their midst. Several of them toppled, feet tangled in a hissing whirl of flowered vines that seemed to have appeared from nowhere in particular.

She had to act now. Pia tore her eyes away from Chandra and turned to face Tezzeret, eyes blazing. "My name is Pia Nalaar, leader of the renegades. I'm prepared to enter Consulate custody."

Dovin arched a smooth, hairless brow, and a wave of surprised murmurs arose from the group of soldiers. "Indeed?" he said. Was this the fearsome Renegade Prime that they had prepared for? "You will, I trust, excuse a need to take precautions appropriate for a prisoner of your...reputation."

Unfazed, Tezzeret gestured the Consulate soldiers forward, his face lit with a feral grin that somehow never reached his calculating eyes. "Of course. Do show the criminal to her new residence," he said, flicking a hand in Pia's direction. Hands took either of her wrists, and filigree manacles clamped down on each.

"Maximum security?" Baan asked, hopefully.

"Whatever you see fit," Tezzeret said impatiently. "Now, as for the others..."

Art by Tyler Jacobson

"Pia Nalaar," intoned one soldier, "you are hereby placed under the authority of the Consulate for the following crimes: defamation of government property, leading a conspiracy against the government, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, violation of the Aether Distribution Act—"

Chandra's yells drew still nearer—soon she'd be in surrounded by the growing ranks of soldiers. She had to stop her advance somehow.

"You forgot assault!" Pia said with a swift side kick to the gut of the soldier next to her. "And the Aether Act was an appalling sham!" she added, bashing her manacled hands like a hammer against another soldier.

Immediately the hands on her arms tightened like vises and began to pull her away.

Through the wall of soldiers, Pia heard the pale woman shout to Chandra: "They have her! You can't risk it now; we have to go!"

Pia let herself go limp as she watched the spires of the Weldfast, the renegades that had become her new family, and the daughter she had thought she'd lost all disappear from view.

Art by Tyler Jacobson

* * *

Retreat was never Liliana's favorite option.

They had lost the mass of Consulate guards in the crowded streets, and found themselves almost alone on one of Ghirapur's side streets. Here there were only a few curio sellers and an older woman dressed in vibrant green-blue robes patiently browsing their wares. The chaos of the scuffle had been smoothed over like water.

Chandra sat at the foot of a flight of dusty apartment stairs, clutching her knees to her chest, face buried in the old shawl she often wore around her waist. Silent. Liliana hadn't seen her silent for this long in some time—usually it meant she was asleep.

Nissa stood at a distance she probably felt respectful, saying nothing, slender fingers massaging her tattooed forehead.

Liliana paced beside the two, nerves strung tighter than a hangman's noose. "That man with the metal arm—I know that man. He's—"

Searing memory flashed behind her eyes. Jace, his back stitched with ugly white scars from a manablade. Wincing in the dark as she traced fingers across them, eyes burning.

She jumped as her own jeweled rings clattered together, a discordance of metal. "He's...dangerous," she muttered, forcing her fists to uncurl. "His presence here is—it can't be coincidence."

Nissa turned her gaze to the necromancer, green eyes brimming with cold accusation. "Why did you leave without letting us know? To put yourselves in danger like that—you're fortunate I found you!"

Liliana's lips curled as she flicked a wrist dismissively in Nissa's direction. "Tezzeret is more threat than you could know." She raised her eyes imperiously to meet Nissa's. "And watch your tone—I'm not one to ask permission or forgiveness."

Nissa's eyes narrowed, traces of green fire appearing at the ends of her staff. This was not lost on Liliana, who immediately smoothed her face into a mask of disaffected nonchalance.

"Why are you even here?" Liliana swiveled a wrist in the hot afternoon air, the gesturing encompassing the entire glittering plane of Kaladesh. "Did the rest of you take a vote while we were gone? 'Gatewatch rule number whatever, no going home without written permission'?" She glanced over at the pyromancer expectantly, but Chandra gave no sign she'd even heard.

Nissa had. "Have you been provoking her this whole time?" she said, aghast. "I thought you—is this what you consider friendship? You...monster. I hope this pleases you!" The elf drew herself up to her full height in front of Liliana and slammed the end of her staff into the cobblestone, unaware of the traces of green fire appearing at its ends.

It had been centuries since someone had used that tone with her—often it was the last thing they did. But Liliana had plans, plans that needed powerful allies. Instead, she had somehow found herself staring down an angry, interdimensional-monster-killing elf and what had been a delightful walking powder keg that had defused itself into a heap of despondence.

The necromancer shrugged into Nissa's accusatory stare. "We're all women here. Chandra can do as she pleases."

Monster, am I?

The words bubbled up in her mind. Exactly what to say to cut the deepest.

"She ran from you," she whispered up at the elf. "You didn't follow—so she came to me."

The red of Nissa's cheeks stood out starkly against her green tattoos. Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

She'd always had a knack.

"If that's all you have to say, I've important questions to attend to." Liliana turned on her heel from the two with an impeccable toss of her hair, leaving the scent of lavender and the whirl of skirts in her wake.

From her place on the steps, Chandra lifted her head and tried to wipe her face with the back of a gauntlet. Her hands clenched and unclenched into fists as she stood up.

"I-I wanted to stay..." Chandra said as she lifted her face from the shawl. Nissa offered her a hand, but Chandra tottered to her feet on her own.

"I'm going for a walk," she mumbled to the ground and stumbled toward the street vendors. Nissa hurried after her.

The robed woman at the vendor stall completed her purchase, then placed a comforting hand on Chandra's armored shoulder.

"Seems you've had a hard day, my dear," she said softly, beaming an inviting smile at the two Planeswalkers.

Chandra bobbed her head at her and sniffled loudly. She managed a wan smile and squeezed the woman's hand back. There was something comforting and familiar to her face.

The robed woman pulled an elaborately embroidered handkerchief from around her pockets and pressed it into the pyromancer's hands. Chandra buried her face into it, wiping away tears. It smelled of rose tea with a hint of machine oil...like...home.

"Oh, that's it now, dry your tears..." the older woman said, lowering her voice as Chandra finished dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose into the handkerchief.

"We need you to be strong," she continued, her voice suddenly turned steely and clear, "when we find your mother and take her back from those Consulate soldiers, Chandra."

Chandra looked up into a face that she now recognized. "Mrs. Pashiri?"

Art by Magali Villeneuve

"It's been a while since I've seen you last, child," Oviya Pashiri said as she smoothed the wild strands of hair from Chandra's forehead and leaned the pyromancer against her shoulder. Together, the three made their way down Ghirapur's winding streets, deep into the secret walkways that Mrs. Pashiri knew best.

5

Born of Aether

By Alison Luhrs

The aetherborn of Ghirapur are a race of pleasure-seekers and adrenaline junkies. With a lifespan of up to four years, they consider the city their natural habitat and parties their playground. Although their lives are short, they also possess empathic abilities that allow them to experience the energies of those around them.

Yahenni, an investor, philanthropist, and socialite, knows their life is near an end. When they host one of their fabulously over-the-top parties before the Inventors' Fair, three unexpected guests arrive seeking dangerous knowledge.

* * *

Art by Jonas De Ro

I

I adore getting dressed in the mid-afternoon. There's something to be said about preparing for an all-nighter in the middle of the day, a level of foresight and preparation that can be lost when attending a last-minute party. I'm not dressing for two hours from now—I'm dressing for two days from now.

What kind of host looks like a thrown-together mess sixteen hours into their own party? Hosts who are failures. That's who.

The mid-afternoon shines through the curtains of my private chamber, illuminating the solid-gold vanity that dominates my largest wall. The light shimmers filtered and golden on the jewels, trinkets, and treasures abundant that peek from every drawer and glitter from every surface of the immense chest. I am aetherborn; I know when I will die and I know exactly how I'll spend my time getting there, and none of that time will be reserved for idiots who don't think I deserve to look good.

As I adorn myself with my second-favorite broaches, I can almost hear the commotion of the party staff downstairs. The caterers are making good use of my kitchen—organic beings are so fussy about their food. Luckily my caterer, Nived, has never failed me. He's currently hard at work in the kitchen preparing for the people with stomachs; a fountain of imported palm wine from the coast, a dozen blends of tea, trays upon trays of samosas, pani puri, aloo tikki, and a massive table of desserts (the shrikhand always has a line in front of it, so it must taste good). The rest of my staff right now is busy assembling the canopy on the roof. Long after the meaty tired masses of partygoers will descend to rest, my siblings of aether and will I dance into the night, the day, and the night after, lost to the ecstasy of the celebration.

But that will come later. After two and a quarter seconds of consideration and rummaging through my vanity, I decide on the jasmine-and-aether-infused attar for the night. It's a personal favorite. My reflection catches my eye. I preen. I don't look a day past three!

Even from down here I can sense the happy excitement and sandalwood-scented anticipation of the party staff up on the roof. I've come to pity other species for their inability to sense what we can. "Empathic resonance" is what they called it when my kind first crawled out of early aether refineries fifty years ago. "A curious ability to accurately sense the emotional state of beings in a nearby perimeter." They took great credit for the invention of us without considering for a moment that we invented ourselves. I huff a sad laugh. The only thing we've invented since then are ways to entertain ourselves.

As I dab the attar on my wrists and neck, I watch a tiny piece of my dermis dissipate into a wisp of gentle smoke. The more my hard dermis vanishes, the closer I am to my end. I can see the blue of my aether flowing underneath the crack. I'm struck by its beauty. It's lovely. A gentle reminder to hurry up. I cover it with an extra bracelet.

My kind are innately aware of the passing of time and exactly how much of it each of us has left. It's like waiting for a train. Every noise lifts your head and every gust of wind shifts your seat, but it still hasn't come quite yet.

I'm dressed, glimmering and ready. I have fifty-four days left to live.

* * *

II

Properly gilded, I ascend the steps to the roof and hit a wall of sound. There is no better feeling than being slapped in the face with the firm hand of party music.

The canopy casts welcome shade on the plush carpet my staff dragged up from downstairs. The decorators have put magnolias on the tables, dangled them over the sides of the building, and beautiful silks line the rails and decorate shimmering filigree in the late afternoon sun. As I walk I easily refill empty glasses, dodge two humans kissing (I beam at that pair. I set them up at the last party—it's always nice to use my powers for good), direct dwarves to the restroom, and adjust the volume on the domestic-model panharmonicon.

Forget substances and adrenaline—parties are the finest vice. I relish the sensation of my guest's pleasure. I have no idea what eating a roasted animal feels like, but I imagine it's something like that. I indulge in my hosting duties, and my guests bloom with praise.

My dear friend and ace pilot Depala (the Depala!) sits relaxed and easy on a more private couch. Her hyena rests at her side, happily gnawing a bone while Depala toys with a golden leash.

Art by Greg Opalinski

"Depala, darling, my parties are always brighter with you here," I hug her earnestly and lean down to give the hyena a loving scritch behind the ears. The hyena nuzzles into my hand.

"She's fond of you, Yahenni," Depala says with a trusting smile. "Finding time to relax now that you've retired?"

"Somebody keeps up with the news awful closely," I chide while refilling her glass.

"Usually just the racing results, but I sift through the business news too."

My family line made our fortune as investors. I announced my retirement as soon as I knew I had less than sixty days left. Bold investment strategies are much easier to make when you don't live to see the outcome.

I take a seat at her side. "You'll be attending my penultimate party in a month then, I assume? It would be a hell of a bore without the best pilot in Ghirapur."

Depala smiles, hand absentmindedly petting her hyena. "Wouldn't miss it. Aetherborn customs are the best."

"I agree wholeheartedly. We simply don't have time for anything less, darling."

Depala's mouth tightens. Her brow furrows as her eyes dart for anyone who might be listening, "So...you aren't going to put it off?"

I can't help but bristle.

"I know what you can do, Yahenni," she says with a meaningful look.

"I'm not willing to go those lengths, Depala." I pick at the crumbling dermis on my arm. I've known for some time that I am capable of essence draining, but I'm not willing to use it. It's a rare gift that is best kept unexpressed. I couldn't steal the life force from another sentient being just to cling to life past my expiration date. What would my friends think of me?

"It's an option," she says flippantly. "I don't know how it works, how much time you'd get from...someone else. I wasn't sure if you'd consider it."

"It's crossed my mind, but I want to go out the old-fashioned way," I force myself to say.

At that moment, Nived, my caterer, brings over a bottle of Depala's favorite beverage. So thoughtful—he's almost as good as I am.

"You're a good person, Yahenni," Depala says once we're alone. "A few extra days isn't worth the guilt of doing so."

I'm uncertain if she's right.

* * *

III

Three women stand outside the entrance to my flat. Mrs. Pashiri I know instantly (one of the most famous inventors in the world, as well as the fiercest board game enthusiast I know). To her right is a young red-headed woman in an out-of-fashion wrap (that style is from years ago— does she go outside?).

On the other side is the most fascinating person I think I've ever seen.

Art by Willian Murai

Her eyes are endless, a brilliant green from center to lid, a vivid beauty that is betrayed by an uncomfortable stance. It is tragic for someone who looks so interesting to be so tense. Her dress is decorated with brilliant flowers (are those real?) and cut in a way that it could fit only her. Had I any interest in romancing persons, I would be tempted, but to me her allure is strictly in terms of social gain. My goals as a host are to make my guests happy, of course, but being seen palling with interesting people is always a bonus.

"Yahenni, my friend," Mrs. Pashiri says, "this is Chandra and Nissa. Chandra, Nissa, this is Yahenni. They are an investor for young inventors in need and one of the most generous philanthropists I know. May we join the festivities?"

"Absolutely, Mrs. Pashiri." What an introduction. I'm internally blushing.

I hold open the door for the elf. "Gorgeous eyes, darling," I compliment as Nissa enters. She smiles tightly.

The red-headed one stands awkwardly outside. I look at her dubiously and turn to Mrs. Pashiri.

"That is Pia Nalaar's daughter, Chandra," she says.

I stand aside and let the daughter of the most dangerous person in Ghirapur enter. "The party is upstairs, so let's chat where it's quieter," I say.

I lead them to my patio in the back on the ground floor. Mrs. Pashiri catches my ear as we walk.

"Pia Nalaar was captured, you know." I did not know. This is unusual for me.

"Pia doesn't make mistakes like that. Tell me what you know."

We walk, and Mrs. Pashiri explains the situation. Potted plants and a cheerful fountain line the exterior of the sitting space, and four weathered seats are enclosed in the middle. The sound of the party on the roof trickles down and provides a nice cover for our conversation. I let them sit and wave a staff member to supply drinks for my guests as Mrs. Pashiri finishes filling me in. I mull over the arrest of Pia Nalaar.

"I'm afraid I'm at a loss," I say, "I don't know where the Consulate would take prisoners of Pia's standing."

Mrs. Pashiri nods, "I see."

"I apologize. I take great pride in making use of my connections, but this one is a dead end for me."

I feel a hot wave of smoky anger to my right. "If it was your parent you'd help us," Chandra jabs.

"I don't have one of those," I say with a flippant shrug. Chandra's frown tightens. She feels foolish. She really shouldn't—it doesn't bother me.

My waitstaff returns and I distribute a cup of palm wine to Mrs. Pashiri and a glass of wood alcohol to the elf. I've found in my experience that elves tend to appreciate the stronger stuff—a trait I admire and envy greatly.

"There may still be people of use to us here," Mrs. Pashiri adds, taking her cup with gentle, weathered hands.

I think on the guests upstairs and begin running through my connections.

Suddenly there's a commotion at the front door. Nissa jumps, Chandra looks on with curiosity. From our place on the patio, I can see a gaggle of aetherborn burst through the front door carrying a chair with a rapidly dissolving aetherborn up top. The aetherborn atop the chair is glowing with the brilliance of near-death. Their dermis is dissipating, and they are more smoke than form at this point. It's embarrassing. I look away.

"It's my penultimate party!" they yell with enthusiasm. The motley group heaves the chair and moves the living wake up the stairs toward the roof.

Chandra looks at me with amusement, "Do you know who that is?"

"I'd rather not," I say, picking at the place on my wrist I covered earlier in the day. A tiny wisp of smoke escapes. I hate watching myself die like this.

Chandra places her hands on the table with purpose and stands. "Welp. I'm going to start asking around. Nissa—"

"I'm fine," the elf replies softly. Her energy is cold and bitter with unease. She is not fine, so I decide to intervene.

"Nissa, was it? Follow me; you must tell me where you found that ensemble."

* * *

IV

We ascend the stairs until we reach the floor just below the rooftop. I lead Nissa out to the balcony. What sort of host would I be to have an uncomfortable guest at my own party?

"You seemed to want an escape," I remark.

The elf crosses her arms. "I'm fine," she repeats. She's still not fine, but her curiosity spills over, "What's a penultimate party?"

"The last thing we aetherborn do is die, so the second-to-last thing we do is throw a penultimate party with mandatory attendance. If one doesn't have enough friends, one hijacks someone else's celebration." I motion toward the roof, the sound of the party and the dying aetherborn cheering upstairs. "This loser is, unfortunately, welcome to stay."

The elf doesn't respond. She may not speak much, but her energy is incredibly easy to read.

"Now then. On a scale of one to wishing for death, how much do you hate parties? Be honest."

"Eight. Nine. Whatever a baloth gnawing off my leg is."

I make a noncommittal noise. "That bad, huh?"

Those incredible eyes unfocus. She remembers something, and the aura around her has a tinge of bittersweetness.

"We used to have parties back home."

I quietly refill her cup, "And what did you do at them?"

"We would talk, reconnect. Sometimes we would hike somewhere special."

"Do you still go to parties in those places often?"

Art by Jung Park

Nissa is silent. I sense those places aren't there anymore. "Well, then. What can I do to make this particular party easier for you?"

"Could we go sit somewhere separate?"

"Darling, I'd go to the ends of the city for you. Platonically. And only if you asked me to nicely. And only if it's not raining or anything." The elf is amused by this. I sense her relax, a bit. Her energy picks up with the change in song upstairs. How sweet. She likes music. I ignore the puff of my own dermis that dissipates off the back of my neck. "Let's head up to the roof. You stick with me—the people-watching is exquisite."

I sense Nissa's apprehension and gently clear a path through the crowd. Along the way upstairs I greet a new guest and quickly pass a handkerchief to another guest with some samosa crumbs on their face. The party has reached a natural lull and the attendees chat pleasantly with one another. I lead the elf to the end of the canopy sectioned off by a strategically-placed barrier of potted plants.

An attendant approaches us as we sit. I accept the vial of attar they pass to me and catch their ear, "Have someone lower the volume on the panharmonicon for my guest and stick to the slow stuff." There is no greater treasure than an accommodating waitstaff.

"This may come off as presumptuous, but you don't strike me as a city girl," I say smoothly. The elf cracks a small smile. I sit back on the couch, "You've never encountered aetherborn, have you?"

"No. Tell me about your kind," Nissa says softly, with earnestness. She is the most active listener I have ever actively watched listen. Her gaze is only mildly disconcerting.

"We are a sentient byproduct of the aether cycle. Our families lay claim to areas younglings pop up and then adopt whoever stumbles out. From day one we are fully formed and have a shelf life of anywhere from four weeks to four years."

"What you describe reminds me of elemental beings I've encountered," Nissa says, brow furrowing.

"You've encountered more than I have, in that case. All I know is what I am."

"I don't understand."

"Understand what?"

She tries a gesture, but the meaning is beyond me.

I feel a bit awkward. "Is there something wrong?"

She tries another half gesture, then pauses, thinking over her words. She finally arrives at a sentence. "I don't understand how something of nature can be native to a city."

"We are the city. I'm made of aether, and one day, I'll return to it. Nature is all around us, it just may look different than what you're used to."

Nissa makes a small noise. She had clearly never thought of it that way.

During the pause in conversation I silently point another guest in the direction of the restroom.

The silence persisting, I watch Nissa close her eyes. What is she doing? Her face seems confused. Ear tilts as if she's listening. Does she hear something I don't? A corner of her mouth lifts in a smile.

Art by Wesley Burt

"I feel it. This world is structured. Cyclical."

Somehow, this elf can sense the nature of my home.

I sit back, at ease. "The Great Conduit is always present, even here in Ghirapur. My people are proof of that. Our wilderness doesn't care if this city is crowded, its rhythm continues all the same."

A full smile climbs up Nissa's face.

I lift a nearby elven pitcher. "More?"

"Yes please," Nissa responds automatically. I refill her cup. She may be unwilling to disclose much, but I can feel her buzzing with wonder. I must be full of revelations tonight.

* * *

V

I hear a commotion downstairs and stand. Nissa sets down her cup and looks at me with a question in her endless eyes. Age has heightened my ability to sense, and I know immediately what is wrong and where.

I stop myself from running down the stairs (I fall apart more with exerted effort) and make my way purposefully to the restroom on the floor below me. Guests part the way, and I realize that Nissa and now Chandra are following in my wake.

At the end of the hall in front of the bathroom stands an imposing member of the Consulate security force. The bathroom door is clearly locked and he is attempting to shove his way in. This enforcer is tall—nearly the height of the potted tree next to the door. His clothing is old but the hemming new; this man is no stranger to physical confrontation. The weapons at his side are not fit for street patrol, but the jingle of keys against his armor betrays his position. He must work in the prison system.

I motion for Chandra and Nissa to hide behind the corner while I approach the man alone.

"Can I help you, sir?"

The enforcer lets go of the door handle and looks me up and down. "A wanted convict is currently barricaded behind that door. They're coming with me regardless of how you feel."

"So you came into my party—my house—without an invitation?"

The enforcer takes a half step closer and looks down his chest at me.

"Do you want your party to be in violation of noise ordinances?"

"...No..."

"Then don't interrupt official Consulate business."

I do not doubt that this enforcer will shut my party down just to get to whoever is behind that door. The Consulate is petty like that. I despise petty.

I turn my back to the pig of a man and find Chandra and Nissa. There's an easy solution to this. These two are firmly built—they can fight—and for their favor I can provide them something in return. "I'll give you the information you need if you'll help me."

"What do you need?" Nissa asks softly.

"Nissa, I need you to escort this unwelcome guest outside."

The elf smiles. "With pleasure," she says with calm conviction. She raises a hand and a gentle light glows in those endless eyes.

Something in my chest sings a little, but the song isn't for me. My waking mind tells me to ignore the strange humming I feel at a distance. I turn to Chandra.

"Chandra, I need you to help me break down the door when he leaves."

Pia Nalaar's daughter looks at me with genuine surprise. She says in a strangely small voice, "Really?"

"Yes really. My body is weakening and I can't get through on my own. You up for it, darling?"

Chandra's only response is a slightly alarming, barely contained chortle. It is very disconcerting hearing that sound come out of a young human woman.

A thud around the corner—I lean over and can't help but let out a small noise of alarm. The potted plant by the door is inexplicably wrapped around the enforcer's leg and the man is dazed on the floor. It may be best if I just...not think about the logistics of how this all happened. Either way, I don't have time to care—I bound around the corner and lean down next to the man's face.

"All right," I whisper. "Pia Nalaar. Which prison is she being held in?"

The enforcer groans. I think he broke a tooth in his fall. No matter—he doesn't need to talk to tell me where she is. I open my senses and speak quickly.

"Kohali Prison?"

The man groans, and his energy stinks of irritation.

"Gupha Penitentiary?"

Impatience.

"Dhund prison?"

A distant alarm of spice and salt, blooming into panic as he meets eyes with me. Had I the inability to read his energy I would never have been able to guess the answer from his face. He's good. I pat the man on the head. "Thank you for your cooperation."

I turn to the elf. "Nissa, if you will?"

She walks over and easily hoists the man over her shoulders in a fireman's carry and casually takes him outside. Well, damn.

"How much of this place should I leave standing?" Chandra interrupts, pulling her goggles down.

"Ideally all of it except for this specific door?"

Chandra nods, grinning from ear to ear, and quickly melts the locks with a white-hot finger to the metal. I shake my head. Humans and their party tricks.

I sense Nissa emerge behind me as Chandra finishes. The stink of too-much-attar leaks out of the space between the door and the wall.

"Anyone with lungs go back to the party," I announce to the rest of the onlookers, turning my attention to the guests. Mrs. Pashiri has joined them, and looks on in concern. I move close to them.

"Dhund Prison is where you'll find Pia," I whisper.

Mrs. Pashiri gasps. "Not there," she says, "please tell me he wasn't telling the truth."

I shake my head. Mrs. Pashiri turns to Chandra, "Baral is stationed there."

The air around me instantly rises in temperature. "We need to go now," Chandra says tightly. Mrs. Pashiri nods and the two head down the stairs to depart. Nissa holds back, and locks her gaze on me.

"Thank you, Yahenni, for the conversation."

I nod. "No problem at all, darling. If you are free in a month, you should come back. I'll be throwing the biggest party of my life. Even you wouldn't want to miss out."

She smiles, and in a moment she is gone.

* * *

VI

I open the now-unlocked door and am met with a wave of perfumed stink. The door closes behind me, and I turn to see who locked themselves in here. I had sensed caged distress earlier, and sure enough, here sits the source. At the end of the bathroom, sitting on the floor with their back to the wall, is the dying aetherborn from earlier. Their dermis has almost entirely vanished, and the blue glow of their essence mixes strangely with the light of the setting sun filtering in through the window. Empty bottles of perfume are scattered at their feet.

Art by Ryan Yee

"Way to hog the good stuff to yourself," I say as a light-hearted balm. I'm more than aware that my quip is a piece of silk on a gaping, bloody wound.

"I've got about a minute left," they wheeze, "I was being tailed by the Consulate and didn't want to go out in front of everyone."

"You escape from prison or something?" I ask, my eye catching a broken security anklet on their leg. The aetherborn only groans.

I sit beside them. I know if it were me I'd want company. "Does anyone upstairs know your name?" I ask.

"No. They're just here for the party."

"That's the only reason any of us are here, darling."

I inhale the wafts of perfume lingering in the air. As the other aetherborn continues to dissipate, their energy mingles with the spilled attar. I've seen many of my kin in their dying moments, and it is almost always with an air of triumph. They fought and kicked and scratched and reveled in the glory of life, and here they are at the finish line.

I take hold of what's left of their hand.

I can feel their energy pulsing underneath my palm.

"Did you have a good run?"

The other aetherborn turns their head to me and looks me over. They strain to speak but manage to get out a single affirmation. "You bet your ass I did."

In that instant I am filled with envy. I have so little time left. My life, this aetherborn's life, all the lives of my kind are spent chasing and cramming as much experience as we can into a pathetically small span of time. It isn't fair that we have to burn so fast.

It isn't fair I'm next.

The other aetherborn convulses and emits a dark smoke. Their dermis crumbles and the contained aether escapes and rises in a gentle vapor to the ceiling.

I sit silently under the haze of aether above me. It's lovely.

After a moment I stand and open the window. The stink and the energy escape into the air, into the world, into the Conduit. I turn to the pile of clothes left behind on the floor and gather them along with their jewelry and accessories. A coin purse, a clock, a bundle of Consulate documents. I quickly skim through them—a minor infraction for petty theft. They shouldn't have been sent to prison in the first place.

I crumple the documents up in anger. Those Consulate bastards are just killing us faster.

As I sort the stranger's jewelry and put on one of their bracelets, I'm hit with a sudden thought.

What if I left the party and went out? What if I hunted down the Consulate filth that detained this aetherborn and gave them what they had coming? I'd drained essence (once, accidentally) before; it felt amazing. I could do that again. I could do that again a hundred times over, if someone deserved it.

I watch a tiny wisp of smoke lift away from my skin toward the open window.

I think of the unconscious Consulate enforcer left on the street outside my house.

He'll still be there in a few hours.

I could sneak away for a few minutes.

No one would notice.

No. The time will come for that. When it's me on the floor of a bathroom surrounded by empty perfume and bursting from my seams...maybe then I'll do it.

I have other things to do with the time I have left.

I grab one of the half-empty bottles of aether-infused attar and douse myself in it. Vivid determined andric cedar. The jolt of energy runs through my being, the glint of newly borrowed gold shines at my neck, and the rumble of the party echoes from the roof.

I storm upstairs and emerge to a just-set sun and the glow of lanterns in filigree stands. The crowd parts, respectful of my position of power in the ecosystem of my making, and the panharmonicon quiets. I walk purposefully to the main canopy, arms raised with intent. My guests hush and turn their attention toward me.

I yell, "Mark your calendars for a month from now, distinguished guests and undistinguished riffraff!"

My friends and guests cheer. They're like me. They relish their high class and low bars.

"I'm hosting the party of a lifetime here after the conclusion of the Inventors' Fair. I expect each and every one of you to be there, and tell everyone you know that they would be fools to miss out."

They cheer. I feel like I could live for ten more years.

"Enough of that, though. You all don't want to hear more about me, right?"

The party screams, "Of course we do!"

"Well too bad! I'm sick of talking! Get on the floor, turn the music up, and somebody open another cask for everyone in here with a liver!"

The crowd loses their minds. The collective thrill of revelry rushes through me and I am lost to its currents. I rush into the storm of people dancing and am hit with a spray of aether-attar someone tossed in the air. The music turns up and the beat of the song drives the movement of the bodies around me and everything feels alive. The glow of the aetherborn dimly reflects off the sweat of the dancing mass, soft tendrils of aether dissipates into the sky above, and I am alive I am alive I am alive and in this one singular moment I am drowning in the revelry of existence.

6

Bottled Up

By James Wyatt

Drawn to her home plane of Kaladesh by reports of the Consulate looking for a disruptive renegade, Chandra discovered, to her shock, that the renegade in question was her mother! Their reunion was cut short, though, by Consulate soldiers who took Pia Nalaar into custody. While Liliana pursued a different lead, Chandra and Nissa found an old friend of Chandra's parents, Oviya Pashiri, and began looking for Pia's prison cell. By way of Oviya's many renegade contacts, they have learned that she is being held in the Dhund, a secret complex run by the vicious mage Baral—the same Baral who hunted a young Chandra down and killed her father.

* * *

Nissa's head swam as Mrs. Pashiri led her and Chandra away from the noise and smells of Yahenni's party and back into the darkness of the streets, where the explosive excitement of the Inventors' Fair had faded into the cheerful bustle of night.

Ghirapur was not as bad as Ravnica, with its sharp angles and gray streets. In fact, the city had clearly been laid out with an eye toward the flow of magic—of aether—through the streets and around the buildings. And the aesthetic of the place was all graceful curves and delicate lines, more like the forests of Zendikar than the hard edges of Ravnica.

Still, it was thronged with people.

It was all Nissa could do to keep up—with the events of the day, with Chandra's palpable agitation, with the whole chaotic jumble of the plane.

"The Dhund," Mrs. Pashiri said, shaking her head. "Of all places."

Art by Magali Villeneuve

Chandra growled. "Baral! Why him? Shouldn't he be dead or...or retired or something by now?" She paused. "Preferably dead." Another few steps, as tiny flames licked around her fingers, which were clenched in tight fists. "In a fire."

"In a just world, he would be," the older woman said.

"Well, when I get my hands on him..." Chandra seemed to bite her tongue, maybe literally. "Sorry, Mrs. Pashiri."

Nissa frowned. Until now, she had seen Chandra's fiery wrath directed only against the Eldrazi, or the twisted, corrupted creatures on Innistrad that might as well have been Eldrazi. The idea of her unleashing that anger against a person was unnerving. How much pain must he have caused her? she wondered.

"Liliana told me I should hunt him down," Chandra said. "Find him and take my revenge. I should've listened to her."

Nissa wanted to reach out to her, put a hand on her shoulder, offer some kind of calm through her touch. But she was afraid—of what? Of causing pain, like touching a burn? Or of feeling Chandra's pain more powerfully than she already did, coursing between them like fire?

"And where the hell is Liliana, anyway? What the hell is more important than finding where they took my mom?"

Liliana's agitation had been less...heated when she left them, but no less palpable. It had been the first time Nissa had seen the necromancer in a state other than unflappable calm, and she suspected that whatever Liliana was doing, it was very important.

Chandra stopped dead, stamped her foot with a small puff of flame on the cobblestone, and said, "And where the hell are we going?"

"We need to get across the river," Mrs. Pashiri said.

Chandra furrowed her brow. "What's across the river? The old energy plants?"

"Yes. And the worst-kept secret in Ghirapur." She lowered her voice. "Gonti's."

"What are gontis?" Chandra asked.

"Gonti is another aetherborn. I think they made their fortune as a smuggler—I dealt with them once or twice, back in the day. Gonti's night market is sort of a hub for contraband aether and renegade inventors."

Chandra gripped the hair at her temples in exasperation, kindling more tongues of fire that licked at her head and hands before dwindling into smoke. "Why are we going there? Where's my mother?"

"I'm sorry, dear. I'm following the best information I have. I'm told the Dhund lies in tunnels beneath the night market."

* * *

Chandra looked physically pained by having to stay in her seat while a small skiff carried them across the river, poled by a young man who feigned indifference as his face betrayed a keen interest in every word Chandra spoke. She vented her energy by furiously tapping her feet. Her hands were in constant motion, and she looked like she was chewing her tongue to avoid saying anything that might incriminate her.

But for those few minutes, away from the lights and the noise and the people of the city, Nissa looked up at the stars and the swirling, shifting blues of the aethersphere and felt calm...tempered only by the nagging worry that Chandra, in her anger and impatience, might set their little boat on fire. The strongest aether current in the sky mirrored the path of the river almost perfectly, and Nissa could feel the agreement between them, as if aether and water were companions bound on the same journey together.

Art by Johannes Voss

She thought of Ashaya then, her elemental companion, a fragment of the world-soul of Zendikar, and she wondered—not for the first time—why she had agreed to leave her home plane and embark on the madness of this journey with these humans. They had done important work together, to be sure, and she had found that they could battle very effectively together. Each of them contributed unique strengths to the team as a whole, and helped cover the weaknesses of the others. She enjoyed being a part of that, of something bigger and better than herself. In a way, it was like being connected to the soul of a plane, joined together in a greater purpose.

But in the whirlwind of fighting Eldrazi, she had found little opportunity to sort out the emotional relationships among the others. Those relationships were evidently...complicated. And finding her own place within that web of relationship was exhausting. It was all so utterly unlike the simple, wordless communion she had shared with Ashaya—as effortless as a touch.

When she touched Ashaya, energy...mana...no, life flowed between them, uniting them—joining Nissa to the natural essence of Zendikar. The closest she had come to that with anyone else was Jace's wordless communication, the directness of his thoughts in her mind. In the heat of battle with the other Planeswalkers, with Jace facilitating their communication, she could control the flow of mana among them. She could lose herself in that flow and let herself be a part of their larger effort. She and Chandra had shared a powerful bond in those moments, open together to the flow of magic through the planes.

Art by Raymond Swanland

Face to face, though—with Chandra or with any of them—it was so much harder. People expect to conduct their day-to-day interactions on a surface level. Just as Jace didn't use his mind-magic to replace everyday conversation, she couldn't expect to forge that same deep connection over breakfast in Jace's sanctum. And when Chandra was this upset and agitated, Nissa feared that opening herself to the pyromancer would be like opening a floodgate to loose a wave of fire.

She sighed and let herself become part of the flow around her, embraced between the aether above and the water below. She felt the beating heart of Kaladesh, and everything else melted away.

* * *

Nissa tried to cling to that connection as Oviya led them into the throng of Gonti's night market, but it was snatched away with every step she took past inventors hawking their latest devices and smugglers offering great deals on illegal aether supplies. The noise pressed on her ears, the smell of close-crowded bodies assaulted her nose, and Chandra was a furnace of emotion creating her own personal bubble of intense heat in the midst of the press of bodies.

While Mrs. Pashiri spoke to yet one more contact—a surly dwarf with a suspiciously bite-shaped piece missing from one ear—about how to gain access to the Dhund, Nissa hesitantly extended a hand toward Chandra's shoulder. She wanted...she wasn't sure. To comfort Chandra, somehow. To take some of her anxiety into herself, if she could, to share the burden that Chandra was struggling to carry. But heat radiated from Chandra's metal armor and Nissa pulled her hand back, imagining the floodgates holding back the raging fire.

"Chandra," she said instead. "On Ravnica, you asked me...you wanted me to help...you were looking for calm."

Chandra wheeled on her, eyes blazing. "I don't want to calm down," she said, her throat and face tight. "I want to find my mom." Her eyes ranged over Nissa's face for a moment—what was she looking for?—and then she turned away. "You just don't get it," she muttered.

I guess I don't, Nissa thought. She closed her eyes and tried to block out the noise and the smell and the riot of colors as she took a long breath.

Interesting, she thought. Aether traced winding paths through her awareness, blown by stray gusts of wind, carried by ventilation systems. I wonder...

Art by Clint Cearley

"Nothing," Mrs. Pashiri said as the dwarf faded back into the darkness of an alleyway. "Everyone suspects that the Dhund is here somewhere. But either no one knows how to get there or they all know better than to tell me. If only I could find..." Her voice trailed off as she scanned the crowd.

Nissa's eyes fluttered open. "I know," she said.

Mrs. Pashiri's eyes widened in surprise, but Chandra scowled. "Why didn't you say so? Damn it, Nissa, they could be torturing her down there. Or she could already be dead."

"I know." She did—she felt Chandra's fear and worry almost as keenly as she had once felt Zendikar protesting the violating presence of the Eldrazi. "I'm not hiding anything from you; I just figured it out. It has to do with the way aether flows through the city. If I can concentrate..."

"I don't care," Chandra barked. "Just take us there!"

"If I can concentrate," Nissa repeated, "I think I can lead us there. Maybe even help us navigate down in the tunnels."

Chandra gripped her shoulders and almost shook her—though the heat of her agitation, pushing against the floodgates, was still more jarring. "So concentrate!"

"Chandra, dear," Mrs. Pashiri said, laying a gentle hand on Chandra's back. "I think your friend needs a little space."

Nissa blinked. Your friend? I'm not...

Ashaya had been her friend. With Ashaya she could reach out her hand and make a connection, perfectly casual, perfectly natural. Effortless. With Chandra—or Gideon, or Jace—nothing was effortless, not even a simple act of touching, like Mrs. Pashiri had just done.

Chandra removed her hands and took a half-step back. "Oh, sorry." She stared expectantly at Nissa.

Nissa met her gaze, and suddenly all of Chandra's pain and anger and frustration burned into her. Tears stung her own eyes, and she looked away. "I'll try." She turned, squeezed her eyes shut and shoved her emotions aside, and pressed her fingers to her temples.

The world suddenly sprawled vast across her awareness, like a map unrolled and spread upon a table. Aether flowed through the plane like a vast river network, soaring through the sky here, dipping down to kiss the earth there; mirroring the paths of streams at times, winding through city streets at others. Refined aether, a different taste, streamed through pipelines above and below the street. Little knots of concentrated aether nestle underground in places, where it could not flow as easily.

Art by Wesley Burt

But through a system of tunnels, aether could move. Not the streams coursing high above in the aethersphere, but stray wisps and tributaries. Nissa had felt it under her feet—a mere trickle compared to the rush around and above them, but there. Focusing her mind on that part of the flow, she started searching for the points where aether entered and left the passageways.

"This way," Nissa said at last, pointing to her left.

Mrs. Pashiri tilted her head. "How do you..."

But Chandra was already moving in the direction of Nissa's pointing finger. "Show me," she said. "Which way?"

Nissa hurried to catch up to her, and steered her toward a small sort of building erected up against the inside of the cavernous room that housed this portion of the market. A glance over her shoulder confirmed that Mrs. Pashiri was still with them, and they wound their way through the crowd until they reached the steel door.

Chandra jiggled the handle. "Locked," she said.

Mrs. Pashiri started rummaging in the voluminous folds of her clothes. "Let me get my tools..."

A blast of white-hot fire leapt from Chandra's hand to engulf the door handle and, presumably, its locking mechanism. Nissa had to shield her eyes from the bright flash, and she felt the intense heat on her face.

"You're attracting attention," Mrs. Pashiri said under her breath.

Chandra kicked the door and it swung open. "Let them get in my way," she growled.

As if accepting Chandra's invitation, a massive hulk of a man strode over, backed up by an even more massive hulk of metal plates, filigree, and gearwork. He shoved Chandra to the side and interposed himself between her and the half-melted door. Either he hadn't seen Chandra's blast of fire or he wasn't wise enough to be afraid of it—Nissa suspected the latter. Or perhaps his sense of duty led him to disregard his own personal safety.

"Hey, now," he said. "Where do you think you're going?"

Art by Sidharth Chaturvedi

Chandra's hair and both her fists ignited as she met the man's stern gaze. "Into the Dhund," she said. "Is this the way?"

Nissa saw a room behind the door, cluttered but disused, and a stairway leading downward. She could practically taste the trickle of aether coming up from the tunnels below.

"That's private property," the man said, apparently undaunted by Chandra's fiery display. Though he shared Gideon's physique, this brute lacked any of his charisma or good humor. He reminded Nissa more of the ogres of Murasa—and she felt a pang of longing for her beloved Zendikar.

"Why don't we discuss this in a little more privacy?" Mrs. Pashiri said mildly, taking the man's arm and drawing him inside the small building.

Clearly, he lacked Gideon's intelligence as well, or perhaps he was put off his guard by Mrs. Pashiri's kindly appearance. While he was ducking his head to get through the doorway, Chandra planted a kick on his backside and sent him sprawling on the floor. His head thudded hard and he didn't raise it again. While Chandra seized Nissa's hand and pulled her inside, the man's automaton tried to come to his rescue. Too large to get through the door at all, it bent over and reached its arms inside. Waving Chandra and Mrs. Pashiri toward the stairs, Nissa drew on the magic pulsing through the earth beneath the creature. Vines broke through the concrete floor and coiled around its legs while others reached up right in front of Nissa and seized its flailing arms. Aether hissed out of it in dozens of tiny jets as the vines started disassembling the automaton.

Nissa followed the others down the stairs, down deep underground, and found herself in the middle of a long tunnel.

Chandra threw her arms around the elf. "You did it!"

Chandra's armor, still hot to the touch, poked Nissa's chest, and a strand of the pyromancer's hair—smelling of smoke—tickled her nose. And a different sort of heat, the raging fire of Chandra's boundless energy, pressed on her as well—the merest hint of a real connection. Then Chandra pulled away and turned back and forth, looking down the tunnel in both directions.

"Which way?" she said again.

"I...have no idea," Nissa confessed.

"What do you mean? You got us this far!"

"We were looking for the tunnels beneath the night market. I found them by tracking the flow of aether beneath our feet. Finding your mother down here is another matter entirely."

"Follow me," Mrs. Pashiri said, starting off to the right of the stairs. "And quickly; that automaton's going to get noticed."

"And then stripped for parts, if I know night markets," Chandra said, shooting Nissa a wry grin.

* * *

Once more, Nissa felt her head swimming. Chandra's frenetic motion, impelled by the desperate need to find her mother, left Nissa breathless from the ride. Every time Mrs. Pashiri stopped to consider a branching passage, Chandra paced back and forth in the hall, her hands releasing puffs of flame as she flexed them into fists. Nissa wondered if she had led them into a useless network of access tunnels built for the old energy plants, since nothing here suggested a secret prison compound. People who looked like shifty renegades connected to the night market kept a very casual watch over some of the passages, and they were easily distracted when Oviya sent a small lifecraft animal or servo skittering down a hall.

"This can't be the right place," she said. "It's too easy. They're too inept to be highly trained secret police."

Chandra laughed. "Never underestimate human stupidity."

"They're on edge," Mrs. Pashiri added. "Nerves wound up tight. So they go running after every clank in the darkness."

Both explanations seemed plausible, but Nissa wasn't convinced. She closed her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath, trying to reclaim the calm she'd felt on the river.

Chandra jolted her out of it with a yank on her arm. "No time to meditate," she said.

Nissa scowled. "You might want to try a deep breath, too," she said, as gently as she could manage.

"Maybe later."

"Just one breath. Open yourself to the flow of energy through the world. Feel the vastness of it."

"I said later!" Chandra stomped down the passage.

Nissa hurried to catch up with her as Mrs. Pashiri trailed behind them.

"You're so closed up, Chandra. It's like you're curled up around all your pain and fear, clutching them to your chest."

Chandra's pain and anger erupted in flames again. "Of course I am!" she cried. "I can't relax, I can't calm down, not while they have my mom!"

"But you'll be better equipped to find her—"

Chandra wheeled on her and flames surged dangerously close to Nissa's face. "This is my mother! For twelve years I thought she was dead. Don't you understand? Do you even have a mother?"

Nissa stopped dead. Something had gripped her chest and was squeezing, driving the breath from her lungs.

Chandra's sudden rage seemed to ebb, as she saw the effect of her words. "I'm sorry..."

"Did you ever see Bala Ged," Nissa said, "when you were on Zendikar?"

Chandra shook her head, blinking.

"It was the home of the Joraga, my people. And when Ulamog...escaped his prison, it was the first place he destroyed." She swallowed hard. "Dust."

"So your—your parents...?"

"They're not gone, or so the elders teach us. The spirits of past generations live among us. I expect they are helping those who seek to rebuild..." Nissa's voice broke. The last time she saw her mother was long before Ulamog awakened. She knew that some of the Joraga had survived. But she had never sought her mother.

Before she knew what was happening, Chandra pulled her into another hug, pinning her arms to her sides. Strangely, the pressure on her chest seemed to diminish.

* * *

Mrs. Pashiri stood at a four-way intersection of unmarked identical tunnels somewhere deep in the maze beneath Gonti's night market.

"I know it can't be that way," she said, pointing to her right. "And it's not the way we came." She pointed her thumb over her shoulder. "But it could be either of these others."

"What even are we looking for?" Chandra said. "Do any of these tunnels go anywhere?"

"If they didn't," Mrs. Pashiri said, "what would be the point of guarding them? I've been trying to figure out where we're going by seeing what tunnels they think are important enough to guard. But I think we're just going in a big circle around the edge of it. I can't find a way to the middle."

Pouring a blast of fire down the tunnel to the right, Chandra roared, "No!" The twin roars of the flames and her voice echoed in the small passages. "You've been leading us around in circles while they have my mom?" She wheeled around and grabbed Nissa's shoulders again. "Nissa! Do your thing. Feel the aether flow or whatever. Figure it out!"

Art by Svetlin Velinov

"I'll try," Nissa said, wincing at the heat of Chandra's hands on her. "It's...different down here."

Chandra stepped back to give her space.

Nissa stood at the center of the intersection and tried to listen—to feel—to awaken herself to the breath of air moving around her, the earth beneath and above and around her, the flow of aether, the ley lines, the magic suffusing it all. But no breath of wind was moving, the merest motes of aether hung motionless in the air, and the earth refused to yield its secrets.

"Pipelines," Chandra blurted. "They'll need refined aether in their little secret hideout or prison or whatever it is down here. Are there pipelines?"

"Yes," Nissa said, and she focused her attention on the distinctive feel of refined aether, a concentrated stream just above the tunnels. "That way," she said, pointing in the direction of the flow—the passage to the left.

Chandra took off down that passage, leaving Nissa and Mrs. Pashiri to straggle after her until they caught up at the next intersection...Wait.

"Chandra, back here!" Nissa called. The pipeline had changed course, made a sudden right turn, but there was no tunnel following its course. Just bare stone wall—

"Yes," she said aloud. The tunnel walls were all stone, but decorated with the intricate swoops and whorls common to all the architecture she'd seen in the city. Pillars—probably just decorative, rather than load-bearing—emerged from the walls like bas-relief at even intervals along the length of the tunnel, and swirling filigree extended out from each one and linked to the next, forming decorative arches, with bare stone below.

Was it a coincidence that the pipeline bent right over one of those archways?

"What?" Chandra said. She had doubled back to where Nissa and Mrs. Pashiri stood and was simultaneously drumming her fingers and tapping her foot—actually creating an interesting rhythm, Nissa noticed, whether she was aware of it or not.

"Could there be a hidden door here?" Nissa said, pointing to the wall.

Chandra stepped over and pressed her palms against the wall—and stumbled forward, disappearing through the stone as if it were a wall of water. Or an illusion.

She stuck her head back out, giving the gruesome impression of a head mounted on the wall as a trophy.

"No hidden door," she said. "But no wall either. Come on!"

* * *

The tunnel network was utterly transformed. Instead of seemingly abandoned access tunnels, they found themselves moving through clean, well-maintained, and well-lit passages of more recent construction. Doors were spaced along the length of the halls, most of them ajar and revealing what looked like the offices of bureaucrats—eerily similar to Jace's paper-crowded office on Ravnica.

Who could work in an office down here? Nissa wondered.

There could be no question now that they were on the right track, and Nissa expected at any moment to find a prison compound filled with angry police guards. But there could be no turning back. She led them on through every intersection, following the path of the aether pipes. Soon they reached a juncture where an aether pipe came down from the ceiling, arced gracefully around the side of the passage, and disappeared below their feet.

"We must be close," Nissa said. "Other pipelines are converging right around here...all around us, actually."

"Uh, Nissa?" Chandra said.

Nissa looked up and saw armored figures closing in on them from every side, the blue glow from the aether pipeline glimmering on metal armor and drawn blades.

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

One of the figures reached up and pulled off a filigree mask that covered his face. Nissa saw his incandescent blue eyes first, like windows into some light-filled eternity. They were surrounded by badly scarred skin that seemed almost as blue as his eyes in the weird glow.

Chandra erupted into a raging bonfire, and a firestorm swept down the tunnel toward the scarred man—giving a pretty clear picture of how he might have acquired those scars. But the flames vanished as they reached him, and Nissa saw the last tongues of fire as they were suctioned into the man's hand—presumably swallowed by some aether-powered device on his arm.

"Not this time, Pyromancer," he said. He reached to the wall and manipulated something, and just as Chandra began her charge toward him, she slammed into a wall that shot up from the floor.

Trapped! Nissa heard her own pulse pounding.

Similar walls now enclosed them on every side, forming a tiny chamber that appeared to be tightly sealed. One side held what looked like a door, including a thick pane of glass—surrounded, of course, by ornate filigree.

Even death here is beautiful. The strange thought flitted through Nissa's mind.

Chandra slammed her fist against the door, making a blast of orange flame that was instantly transformed into shimmering blue sparks, scattering harmlessly away. She pressed her face to the glass and shouted, "Baral!"

So this is Baral, Nissa thought.

She stepped back in surprise when the man's face appeared on the other side of the window. Nissa could better see his scars—half his nose, one cheek, and his forehead were all knotted with the characteristic scars left by terrible burns. Contempt curled his brow and twisted his mouth.

"Pyromancer." He spat the word, barely audible through the thick door. "Baan said you were back. I couldn't believe it. I don't know how you escaped me last time, or where you've been hiding all these years, but it won't happen again."

Chandra threw herself against the door again, pounding at the glass with both flame-wreathed fists, producing only more blue sparks—some form of counterspell magic, Nissa reasoned. "I'll kill you!" Chandra yelled. "You bastard!"

Baral didn't flinch at the outburst. "You're pathetic, little Nalaar. A pathetic freak of nature."

Nissa doubted that Baral could notice, but she saw it—his words cut Chandra, hit some sore spot from her childhood. She stepped closer to support Chandra and returned Baral's glare.

"I kicked your ass when I was just a kid!" Chandra screamed. "Wait'll you see what I can do now!"

"Burn all you like. You'll die more quickly if you burn up the air. Your friends, too."

Chandra threw a wild-eyed, helpless look over her shoulder at Nissa. Her pain and rage were so fierce, so hot, that part of Nissa wanted to back away, but her hand reached out and her palm rested on Chandra's back—just as Mrs. Pashiri had done.

A channel opened between them, and Nissa felt Chandra's fire surging deep in her soul. She pulled her hand away and took a step back.

"Quickly or slowly," Baral continued, "you will die here. I've been waiting a long time for this, Pyromancer." He turned away, lifting his mask back into place and taking a few steps back the way he had come.

"Wait!" Chandra shouted. "My mom. Let her go. Your grudge is against me. Nissa, Mrs. Pashiri, you can let them go too. Kill me, just me."

Baral did not turn back around, and his voice was barely audible. "No."

Chandra roared, all words banished from her mind, and a wave of fire erupted from her body and crashed against the door. Like the sea washing against the great dam of Sea Gate, it sent up a great spray of blue sparks and then turned back on her.

Art by Steve Argyle

Nissa dove away, throwing her cloak over Mrs. Pashiri and trying to shield the older woman with her body as much as she could. The heat slammed into her back, knocking her to the ground, but it passed in an instant. She rolled onto her back to smother any fires that might have kindled in her cloak, then sat up.

Mrs. Pashiri seemed unharmed. Chandra was on her knees, shoulders slumped and head hanging, all her fire doused.

My turn, Nissa thought.

She walked past Chandra and rested her hands on the door. Air-tight—she could feel that right away. And it wasn't just fire-quenching magic that hampered Chandra's spells, it was the twisted enchantment of a counterspell, apparently worked into the substance of the door.

Not the door, then.

She sank to one knee and touched the ground, stretching out her awareness, looking for roots and tendrils that could break through the floor in answer to her call. The smallest sapling, given time, could shatter concrete—and under her guiding hand, the time required for a plant to wrest the door from its hinges would be next to nothing.

"What's that smell?" Mrs. Pashiri asked.

Chandra poked her shoulder. "Nissa, look."

Nissa turned and let her gaze follow Chandra's pointing finger to the top of the wall. A fine grate, one of several set at intervals around the room, was emitting tiny cascades of greenish vapor that vanished from sight as it dispersed. She smelled it now, too—acrid and nauseating, an utterly unnatural chemical smell. "Poison," she said. "He means for us to suffocate more quickly after all."

Chandra slumped back to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest.

"It's all right," Nissa said, returning to her position kneeling by the door. "I'll have us out..."

But it wasn't working. The floor was imbued with the same dampening magic as the door and walls. She couldn't extend her senses, her will, her call into the earth. Nothing living grew within her reach.

The tightness in her chest returned. Being caught like an animal in a hunter's trap was bad enough. But only once before had she felt so utterly alone, so cut off from the life and soul of the world around her: when the demon Ob Nixilis had disrupted the ley lines on Zendikar and torn Ashaya from her.

She sat down, leaning back on the door, gulping the air as she tried to calm her racing pulse.

"It's getting harder to breathe," Chandra said quietly.

Nissa met her gaze. "I don't know what to do," she said.

"Jace would have a plan." Chandra tried to force a smile, but it died on her lips.

"That...Baral? He's built quite a trap for us. Canceling our spells sending them back at us..."

"He's built his career on persecuting people like Chandra," Mrs. Pashiri said. "It stands to reason he would trap his lair to protect himself from retaliation."

"Gideon would probably just beat the door down," Chandra said. "It'd probably break before he did."

Nissa shook her head. "I'm completely cut off, Chandra. I can't reach even the nearest plants. I can't call up an elemental. I don't know what to do."

"Maybe Liliana will show up and save us. Like she did on Innistrad."

Chandra's despair was so plain on her face that Nissa wanted to embrace her and hold her to her chest. Even if it meant being caught up in the fire of Chandra's turmoil, even if it meant burning up...

Of course.

"Try something with me," she said, getting to her feet and holding a hand out to help Chandra up.

Chandra took her hand and Nissa's blood ran hot. Instead of closing the floodgate, she let the fire wash through her. She felt it all—all the rage, the desperation, the turmoil of finding her mother and losing her again...and the tiniest shred of hope. And she reached deep into herself and found something to offer in return: a deep breath of calm, an openness, a taste of the soul of this plane. Chandra's eyes widened.

"Let me fuel your fire," Nissa said. "Maybe together we can overpower Baral's counterspell."

Chandra's face brightened. "It's worth a try!" she said. "That connection..."

"A focused flame," Nissa said. "Not another big wave of fire—too dangerous. Small but as hot as you can manage, right at the edge of the door. Maybe we can melt the hinges."

"Let's do it! Pump me up!"

Chandra's excitement was as palpable as the rest of her emotions. Nissa drew a deep breath, pulling in mana from the living earth around her. That worked, at least—she couldn't extend her magic out, but at least she could draw magic in.

Her lungs began to sting. The poison. She coughed, loosening her grip on the mana she was holding in. "Go," she gasped.

Chandra tried a similar centering breath, accompanied by a clumsy attempt at a stance she had probably learned from the monks on Regatha. Dear Chandra, Nissa thought. Focus is really not your thing.

But a blaze like a dagger appeared in Chandra's hand, small and controlled. Nissa began channeling her mana toward Chandra, and the blade burned brighter and hotter until it was blinding white. Grinning, Chandra turned the blade on their prison, trying to wedge it into the seal around the door.

Blue motes flew back at Chandra like sparks from a welder, and Chandra looked like she was exerting every muscle to keep the fire blazing and physically drive it into the seal.

For just a moment, it looked like it was working—Chandra's arm moved forward...but then a blue-white light flared with a crack like a whip and Chandra staggered backward into Nissa's arms, the last flames fizzling out in her hand.

"Damn it!" she yelled. "Damn you, Baral! Damn you, Consulate! Damned Kaladesh! Why the hell did I ever come back here? Damn-damn-damn-damn-damn!" She accented each expletive by slamming her fist into the door, creating a little spray of blue sparks each time.

Art by Jason Rainville

She turned around and sank back to the floor, looking up at Nissa, all the rage on her face melting into sadness.

"How did this all go so wrong?" she said.

"Why did you come here?" Nissa asked. "What did you expect to find?"

"Pain. I don't know. Liliana said...I don't know." She chewed on her lip for a moment. "Why'd you join the Gatewatch, Nissa?"

"What?"

"You're so connected to Zendikar, right? Why leave? Why come with us humans and deal with all our crap?"

"We're stronger together," Nissa said. "We can use that strength to help other worlds, the same way we helped Zendikar. I don't want to see another plane suffer like Zendikar did."

"Stronger together. That's what Liliana said, isn't it? I don't think that's it."

"What do you mean?"

Chandra's gaze rested on Mrs. Pashiri, who was sitting against the opposite wall, conserving her strength. "We're Planeswalkers, right? And that means it's so easy to feel alone—cut off, like you said before. It will always mean leaving our families behind. Leaving the people we love. I found my mom, and Mrs. Pashiri, but I don't think I could ever stay on Kaladesh forever. We're Planeswalkers—and the Gatewatch is about not being alone anymore."

Nissa blinked. "Being a part of something larger than ourselves..."

"No. Just being a part of something. Together. Having a family, no matter what plane we're on." She smiled weakly. "Having friends."

Art by Chris Rallis

Nissa tried to remember the last person she had called a friend. Not Ashaya, the soul of Zendikar, but a person.

Mazik? Back before I ever left Zendikar, before—

Chandra was on her feet again, face to face with her. "It's not just saving the Multiverse. It's saving each other. Helping each other. Like you coming here...for me. Helping me find my mom."

"I've never really had that..."

Chandra put a hand on her shoulder. "It means a lot to me, Nissa. Thank you."

As Nissa tried to come up with some kind of response, Chandra walked past her and knelt beside Mrs. Pashiri.

"How are you doing, Mrs. Pashiri?"

"I'm all right, child."

"You don't look all right." She looked up at Nissa, her forehead creased with worry. "You should go."

"What?"

"We're Planeswalkers, duh. You should just leave."

"What about you?"

Chandra smiled as tears welled in her eyes, and she shook her head. "I'm going to stay here with Mrs. Pashiri. I think Mom would want that."

"Nonsense, child," Mrs. Pashiri said. "If you have some way out of here, even if you can't take me, you both should go."

"No. I can't let you die here alone."

Mrs. Pashiri took both of Chandra's hands in her own. "Go, Chandra. Go. I've lived a long, full, wonderful life. I buried my own partner years ago. I'm ready."

Chandra kept shaking her head. Keeping her hold on Mrs. Pashiri's hands, she sat down beside her.

"Chandra, you should find your—your mom," Nissa said. "Save her. I'll stay here with Mrs. Pashiri."

Chandra smiled and shook her head. "You're a good friend, Nissa."

It doesn't make any sense, Nissa thought. We're Planeswalkers. We're part of the Gatewatch. We promised to help protect the Multiverse—there's so much good we can do for so many people.

But I just want to stay here.

She sat down beside Chandra and Mrs. Pashiri.

With my...my friend.

7

Release

By Chris L’Etoile

Twelve years after she watched her parents die, Chandra Nalaar returned home to Kaladesh. She found her mother had survived...but Pia Nalaar, now a leader of the renegade movement, was arrested by the ruling Consulate at the command of the Planeswalker Tezzeret. Chandra tracked her mother with the aid of Nissa Revane and Mrs. Pashiri, but all three found themselves trapped by the cruel Baral.

Sealed in a magic-proof chamber filling with poison, the only possible escape is to planeswalk. But Chandra will not leave Mrs. Pashiri...and Nissa finds she cannot leave Chandra.

* * *

He was still getting used to the hands. That's why he almost fell off the final roof.

The mechanical fingers Grandmother had provided were strong, and surprisingly responsive. Nearly like wearing gloves. But like a hand in a glove, their grip was different. He had to consciously remember to use less pressure while holding a glass, and more when jumping across alley roofs.

After the wind of his passage had fallen silent, after his feet had silently bounced him to a stop against the faded dust of the bricks, he felt his weight shifting badly. The ledge was sliding away. His fingers—the real ones—clenched within the encasing gauntlets. With silent efficiency, the mechanical fingers tensed, digging into masonry. He felt the balance steady, and swung his legs up over the lip of the roof with a rustle of wind-snapped cloth. Azure sky and towering chiaroscuro afternoon clouds wheeled past his vision.

It had taken only a breath.

He paused, listening, smelling the wind. A dozen aromatic spices he'd had no names for five months ago wafted from the kitchens below. He now knew them as cardamom, turmeric, cloves, cumin, and others. Most people would scent no more than those, overpowering as they were. Beneath them, he caught sun-hot stone and brass, the musty scent of old oil, and the sweat of a dozen Consulate inspectors.

The hummingbird buzz of surveillance thopter wings throbbed down from overhead. A trickle of gravel tumbled from the holes his metal fingers had left, clattering across the alley floor.

A rustle of fabric. "This place is falling apart." One of the inspectors, her voice echoing off brick walls and cobble pavement. "The Consuls should knock it down and build over."

Another voice, male: "Maybe they will. I heard urban funds were tied up building venues for the Fair..."

Satisfied they found nothing amiss, he padded silently to the far side of the roof and scanned the wall below. Balcony, balcony, rain spout, awning—would that support his weight? Maybe the street lamp instead. Then the wall, finally the street. He was on the ground in a few breaths, metal-clad fingers pulling the borrowed cloak closed.

He looked down at the glittering brass gauntlets. Only the hands were visible from the flowing sleeves of his cloak, but they extended up past his elbows. They'd been crafted by the Glint-Sleeves, a group that specialized in such bodily attachments. Grandmother had them made for him. They would not be questioned here. The cloak she'd made herself, using cunning devices that spun and ticked. "That one you wear is such a bore! That makes you stand out in a crowd even more, you know." He'd held the bolts of silk for her, answering questions of color and pattern with respectful disinterest.

He settled his shoulders, hunched over, and slid into the muttering crowd, listening, ignoring the heavy reek of nervous sweat.

"...what are they doing...?"

"...been in there a long time..."

"...said the renegades have been setting traps..."

"...papa, when can we go back...?"

"...never seen so many..."

From the shadows of his cloak, he observed the clockwork patterns of the orbiting thopters and the irregular pacing of humans and vedalken in Consulate inspectors' uniforms. Grandmother's building was surrounded.

He slipped into another alley, and ascended back to the rooftops. He rested against a shack packed with gardening tools to review the memory. The gold one passed around the back every twenty-second breath, the orange passed behind the building to sunset every fortieth...The scents of the residents' spice garden crowded his nostrils.

It could be done.

He waited, listening to the heartbeats of the thopters cascading from overhead.

Now.

He rolled, threw himself across the roof, pushed off.

The landing pressed the air from his lungs.

Sprinting now, zagging around a skylight, zigging around a chimney.

The pulsing of wings thundered off the brickwork, echoes scattering. Moments left.

Grandmother's building was the tallest on the block. He leapt upwards, extending the metal gauntlets over his head, the bright blue and gold of his cloak snapping behind him...

His brass fingers locked over the lip at the roof's edge. His oversize boots touched softly against the brick.

He grunted—so loud!—as he pulled himself up and over.

He lay there for heartbeats, breathing through his mouth, forcing the air to pass slow and quiet, listening for a change in the thopters' patterns, or a cry from the street.

Nothing.

Grandmother had a terrace on the far side of the building, facing the Consulate's towering Aether Spire. She had her own names for the edifice, the kindest of which was "eyesore," and the rudest of which involved an escalating series of shockingly specific scatological references. He sniffed over the edge. Only her orchids; nothing that suggested the immediate presence of inspectors.

He dropped silently among the plants and slid into her home. Forgive this trespass.

He crouched, listening, as the wind folded her faded linen curtains around him. Two voices. No...three. One with a tone of crisp command. All down the hall, in her sleeping chamber. The apartment had been rudely searched, the contents of the old wooden drawers tossed across the painted tile floor, the couch pillows disemboweled.

He moved silently across the tile, careful to avoid stirring the contents of the spilled drawers, listening to the conversation in the other room.

A woman, her voice deep and serious: "You checked that closet?"

A young man, querulous: "Of course I checked the closet. Nothing."

The third voice, male and sharp: "There has to be something. Some proof. She's stood beside the heart of the movement for over a decade. She couldn't keep all those secrets in her head. Why don't you two...I don't know. Go search the parlor again."

Footsteps in the hall. "You hear that Rashmi made it into the next round?" the young man said. The cracked-metal scent of aether-charged air wafted in their wake. Armed, of course. His voice pitched downwards with doubt; "Doesn't seem to be much use for a vase teleporter."

"You have to think of the long-term implications," the woman replied, carelessly. Glass burst and scampered from under her boot, and she swore under her breath. "Today vases, tomorrow gearhulks..."

He placed his feet precisely, rolling them to avoid any sound, gliding down the hall and into the parlor. The inspectors stood beside each other, surveying the mess they'd made in matching red-and-orange uniforms. Hissing black metal artifacts hung from their belts.

"Did you see her pet?" the young man asked.

"Doesn't have one," the woman answered. "She's a lifecrafter. Makes her own." Her scarred hands described bird-shapes in the air.

He moved swift and silent across the tile, extending his arms as if to embrace the intruders, the wind gathering under the hood of his cloak.

The boy started to turn, brows furrowed. "...But there's white fur all over the couch."

The shadow of him fell across the boy's face. He twitched, hands moving to his scabbard, eyes widening as they focused.

His metal-shrouded hands caught and knocked their heads together.

He winced at the impact of bone on bone as the inspectors collapsed in a pile of breath and limbs. The headache you will share is not to be envied.

Their supervisor's voice floated down the hall. "Basani? What was that?"

He slid to a position near the door.

"Basani?" Footsteps thundered down the hall.

Red and orange silks. Golden metal. Ivory linen. Before he'd even assembled the blur of colors into man, the brass fingers had closed on his neck and lifted him off the floor. Old instincts.

The man wheezed, fingers flailing at the instruments on his belt.

He slapped the artifacts away with his free hand, wheeled the man around, slammed his back against the nearest wall. "Good afternoon."

The man clawed at his throat, mouth working silently.

"Apologies," he said, loosening his grip slightly. "These are not my usual hands." The man wheezed a moment, the stink of him increasing. "You smell of fear," he continued, cocking his head to the side. "Scared?"

"Yes," the supervisor gasped, wide eyes searching the shadows of his hood.

"Good," he rumbled. He let the man sweat for two breaths before asking, "Where is Grandmother Pashiri?"

"Custody. By now," he gawped like a fish pulled into the unbearable desert above its world. "Trap. She's renegade."

He'd hoped she'd escaped, that they'd come here searching for her. But no; they had her, and came seeking something to justify it. "What manner of snare?" he said.

"Was looking. For someone. Set word. We had. Them."

Evasive. He lifted the supervisor another fist off the floor. "Who?"

"Renegade. Prime." The man shuddered in his grip, gagging, the thwarted need to cough overtaking him.

Grandmother often spoke of Renegade Prime, but only by the false-name she affected. He'd met her but once. A woman of noble mien, with distant eyes and a spine made of such iron that it nearly hid the weights bending her shoulders.

"Where is this trap?"

The supervisor jerked his head side to side. "Don't—don't know!"

"Too bad."

His eyes widened, pupils swelling like black pits. "Going to. Kill me?"

"I don't kill." He cuffed the man across the head with his free hand, knocking him insensate, and let him drop to the tiles. "Not anymore."

He returned to Grandmother's terrace and carefully slid the potted orchids aside. If they sought to lure her, she'd have left the building of her own free will. That was something he could use. He closed his eyes and breathed.

The air was a cacophony. He concentrated, tuning out the spices, the metals, the worried crowds, the omnipresent lightning-crack scent of aether-fumes that swirled through the city.

There.

Just a whisper from the street below; summer fruits, roses, hyacinth, and honey. The distinctive attar Grandmother wore. Nearly impossible to find anymore, she'd told him, with stubborn pride. Even fainter, the machine oil and hot brass of the mechanical bird that perched on her shoulder piece to sing coded messages.

The back alley was clear, for the moment. No telling how long it would stay that way. He vaulted the rail, letting the air catch in Grandmother's cloak, and rolled the landing.

The whisper-scent led toward the lowering sun. He moved quickly along the winding streets, nostrils flaring at every breath, doves and tailorbirds fluttering at his passage.

It was a different kind of jungle, but he was a tracker.

* * *

Six Months Ago

The boy squeezed his eyes closed, placed his hands over his face, and counted. "Ichi, ni..."

Giggles all around, and the floor bounced from the pounding of bodies scattering in all directions. He focused on the sounds, listening to the fall of bare feet on wood and reed. His ears were better than most. "...san, shi..."

He was bad at the game. The littlest and slowest. But he only had to catch one. Just one, and that would be enough. Just one, and the others would laugh at them instead. "...go, roku..."

A splash? Sounded like someone was in the pond. That was cheating. He couldn't go in the garden. Not like the others. When the rest spilled out to laugh in the sun, he had to sit on the porch and watch, dangling his heavy feet in the cool spring mists. "...shichi, hachi..."

They had to make the rule just for him, when he was it. But he was the littlest and slowest. He was it an awful lot. "...kyu, ju!"

He opened his eyes to the bright library, sun shining warm and gold through the paper screens, falling on stacks of books and rustling piles of scrolls. "Ready or not, here's I come!" he hollered. The first thing he did was step through the sliding door to the porch, looking to the cheaty pond and squinting against the light.

Art by Rob Alexander

Just a passing crane, raising its head from the water to gaze at his noise. The mist of the garden stirred and rolled in the wind. Wooden wind chimes tinkled and clicked from the roof, big-headed rain charms swaying. Pink blossom petals swirled around his toes.

He turned and padded back into the house, scratching his side, trying to think about the foot noises. He was in the Sixth Library. It sounded like cousin Umeyo went to the Third Library, but Ume was nice. She let him take tooth-stinging bites of her shaved ices, and rubbed his head before she went to bed. So she could have the Third Library, and he'd go anywhere else. Like maybe the Tenth Library, where big brother Hiroku usually went, because that was where his favoritest book was, the one about the field mices and the crows, and Hiro didn't care much about hide and seek anyways.

He padded down the hall through slanting rays of gold, trying to be the quietest version of himself.

A blast of wind flooded from the right, snapping the paper walls taut. The entry room! Someone must have opened the outside door.

He spun and threw the sliding door open. "I gots ya!" he yelled.

The outside door was still closed. A pale giant stared down at him. One blue eye blinked. "You certainly do, small hunter," he rumbled.

He should say hello now.

They told him he should bow and say "Welcome to our house."

What's your name. Can I announce you. Have you traveled far. Do you need slippers.

The giant's feet were bigger than his whole entire head, and ended with claws the size of fingers.

The giant crouched before him, and was still twice his height. He smelled of summer grass and strange trees. His blue eye was rimmed with red, like Hiroku's when he stayed up too late reading. Where the other eye should be was just a scar. "I don't think we've met," he said. His tooths were real pointy, and there were way too many of them.

There were footsteps behind him, making the planks of the hall squeak, but he didn't take his eyes off the giant, because what if he turned back and the tooths had come closer?

The giant's sky-colored eye looked him up and down. "You're shaking."

"MISTER CAT!" They both jumped at the yell from behind his ear. Big sister Rumiyo's voice. Feet pounded away down the hall. "Ma-maaaaa! Mister Cat is back!"

The giant smiled past his shoulder. "Rumi is as loud as ever." He pushed back a step and sat cross-legged, resting his wrists on his knees. He bowed his head. "No harm will come to you from these hands."

He took a step back anyway.

"Nashi?"

He hadn't heard footsteps, because she was big and didn't touch the ground anymore, unless she wanted to. But he could feel the fall of her shadow in the hall, and darted behind her legs. "What is—ah. Welcome back to Kamigawa, my friend," she said.

He poked his nose around the turquoise silk of her robe. The pale giant had uncurled from his sitting position and bowed with great respect. "It is good to see you again, Tamiyo."

She turned from the giant to smile down at him, tucking one long ear over her shoulder. "This is Ajani. He's part of our story-circle." Her voice was like one of the porcelain vases, cool and shining. "Like Narset? He can walk behind the air too."

Narset told stories that moved in long, rambling circles, and would sprawl on the roof to watch the clouds with him. She laughed at all of his jokes, and none of his words. Narset liked stories about dragons the best.

Tamiyo laid a hand on his head. "Ajani, this is Nashi. He's part of our family now."

The giant—Ajani—bowed again. "Honor to you."

He stayed behind Tamiyo's legs, but bowed back, the way she'd taught him to. "And to y—"

"MISTER CAT!" an ivory blur whizzed past his nose.

Ajani snapped around and just managed to catch it in his massive arms. "Oof! Hello, Rumi."

Her gap-toothed grin lit the room. "You been gone too long." Behind him, the planks of the hall thundered as siblings and cousins came running, jumping, skipping, and occasionally floating. Rumi reached up to ruffle Ajani's fur. "I bet you got stupendulous stories!"

"Ajani's back!"

"Tell us about the dragon again!"

"I want to hear about the hole in the world!"

Moonfolk children swarmed around Ajani's legs, touching his pale fur, his vast and gleaming axe, the long white cloak he wore. Hiroku was the tallest, but only came up to the giant's chest. Rumi, still perched on his arm, looked down and scolded the others.

Tamiyo clapped her hands twice. "Enough!"

"...and that's why you all gotta listen to me!—oh." Rumi's voice surfaced as the clamor died.

"Ajani is a guest. It is impolite to make demands of him." Tamiyo clasped her hands at her stomach as he lowered Rumi to the floor. "He has travelled far to visit us. Rumi, tell your father to prepare a welcoming meal. The rest of you may help."

"Well he can't leave before stories," Rumi said. She crossed her arms and stuck out her chin. "That's an ironclad rule, mama. If you get to go have adventures, you gotta tell 'em when you get back."

Tamiyo looked to Ajani, lips pressed into a stern line, eyes smiling. "She takes after her father."

"Of course," the giant said, politely. He looked down at the crowd and placed a hand over his chest. "There will be no departure without a story."

Everyone still grumbled as they trickled out.

"Come on, Nashi." Cousin Ume took his hand in hers, lavender eyes huge and excited. "You can roll rice balls with me."

"All right," he said, and let her pull him along. He took a last look over his shoulder as they pelted down the hall together.

Tamiyo placed her hand on Ajani's arm. She wore a face he'd only ever seen her show Genku, late at night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep. "You've been away for months," she said, nearly below hearing. "Where is Elspeth?"

The giant's neck bent like a willow in the rain. The brightness of his eye closed. "She's...not coming."

Ume pulled him around the corner.

* * *

The scent had led Ajani to still more inspectors.

He perched on the edge of a gleaming brass tower as they milled below, carefully disassembling every piece of machinery they could find. Like ants, they swarmed at the edges of things far larger than themselves, carefully snipping off minute portions to carry off and place somewhere no one would ever look at them again.

The miasma of a battle still floated up; the ever-present lightning-scent of aether and the grit of burnt metal.

A slight pressure settled against the back of his cloak, just hard enough for him to know it as the point of a blade. "You lost, then?" A musical female voice, faintly amused.

Remarkable. He hadn't heard or smelled a thing. Whoever she was, she was no amateur stalker.

He shifted his weight, slowly, slightly— "Planning to jump?" The blade tip poke-poked him playfully. "Easier ways to die, you want my thoughts on it. If you dance among the aether-streams, you'll only curl your hair."

He relaxed. It was a phrase Grandmother's friends used to identify each other, a veiled reference to the heraldry used by the Consuls. She'd told him the proper response. "Better to kick off your shoes," he rumbled, "and let it curl your toes." A reference to the renegade's inversion of the symbol.

"Ah, excellent!" the blade pulled away. "Begging your pardon, friend. You can see we've had a poor day of it."

He was about to turn when an elf plopped down beside him, dangling her legs over the edge of the roof. She looked to be in her late teens, but an elf could have such an appearance and still be far older than him. Her garb was a haze of dark violets and greys, adorned with a tremendously excessive number of pouches and belts. Dark metal bands contained a cascade of sable braids that probably fell to her waist when unbound. She smelled of almonds, strong black chai, and sweat.

"Quite the show, isn't it?" she peered down at the Inspectors, kicking her feet back and forth like a restless child. A half-dozen tiny metal insects clung to the shoulders of her cloak; brass butterflies fanning silk wings in a cunning imitation of life; spiders of dark-tempered steel that sat perfectly still save for their restless eyes. Living blooms, violet and indigo, pushed out from between their metal ribs.

"What do they seek?" he asked.

"Who's to say?" the elf said, carelessly. "Booby traps, mayhaps?" She trilled a songbird laugh. "That would be a lark, wouldn't it just? All this time, looking for something not a one of us would ever use?" She turned merry silver-gray eyes to him. "You can call me 'Shadowblade,' by the by. With a Y in the 'blade.'"

"Shadowblayde?" he echoed, incredulously.

She beamed. "Isn't it just a marvelous codename?"

"I...can see you like it," he said, diplomatically. Grandmother had mentioned a talented young lifecrafter, one of the city-dwelling Vahadar elves. A prodigy, she said, whose mechanical insects snared and dismantled the Consuls' surveillance thopters. But when he'd asked the prodigy's name, Grandmother had only rolled her eyes.

"Came up with it myself, don't you know. I think it sounds terribly dashing." She peered into the shadows of his cloak, and he quickly turned away, tugging the cowl down with his brass hands. "Ah, a man of mystery, eh?" she nudged her elbow into his side. "Brilliant gimmick."

He cleared his throat. "Where is Grandmother?"

Her smile faded. After a moment, she spoke again, and her voice was quieter—older. "Can't say as I know. I came here looking for Renegade Prime. She was overdue." One hand went to her mouth, and she nibbled an already quick-bitten nail. "If she was here, I think...the Consuls may have snatched them."

"You're right. I asked an inspector occupying her home."

One of her eyebrows floated skyward. "You asked?"

"Persuasion was needed," he said, pulling one of the metal gauntlets into a fist. "I was hoping to see where Grandmother had been taken from here. The inspectors have confused the trail."

"Hum, hum, hum," Shadowblayde said, thoughtfully. He blinked. She'd actually said the words? "There's a renegade safe house nearabouts. Anyone who made it out of this afternoon's mess were probably bundled away there. Let's go ask around."

He inclined his head. "I would be grateful."

She jumped to her feet and brushed off the back of her pants. "Can you keep up if I jump along rooftops and suchlike?" Her voice had brightened again, her worry a high cloud swiftly passing the face of the sun.

Under the hood, he smiled. "Try me."

"Brilliant." She turned to one of the mechanical butterflies on her shoulder, and whistled six notes. To another ear, it might have sounded like a bird call. The metal insect fluttered off and away, following a looping and erratic course over the milling Inspectors. "Just to keep an eye on things here," she winked. "Let's go." And she bolted like an elk, leaping gracefully to the next roof.

By the time he was on his feet, she'd bounced two buildings away and was unsuccessfully stifling giggles. He squinted at the gaps, carefully. With one eye, judging long distances was a matter of intuition, inference, and experience. He got a running start, pushed off, and landed beside her.

Her moonlight eyes curved upward in a smile. "Strong legs, I see."

She led him across sun-scalded rooftops, under lines of drying linen, around chimneys, up piles of debris and crumbling stairs, and over streets choked with a thousand milling lives. It was a roundabout path, spiraling outward and back again. Good. That meant she didn't fully trust him; anyone without his memory and sense of place wouldn't have been able to find their destination again.

They descended into the shadows of an apartment complex, its roof a splinted hole, its top story a shimmering lake of shallow, brackish water. The walls downstairs were stained with black and green columns of slowly consuming life. The aether-lights along the stairwells were dark and cold. His eye had no trouble with the gloom, but Shadowblayde produced a glowing blue stick from one of her many pockets.

"I didn't know such places existed," he murmured into the funeral silence. "From above, all of Ghirapur seems to shine."

"Harrumph," she said, grumpily.

She'd actually said harrumph. "Do you read a great deal?" he asked.

She glanced at him in puzzlement. "Bit too much, my mum used to say. Why?"

"No reason."

Their path was blocked by a door, held shut by a complicated, humming artifact. "Six months ago, this whole block still had power." Shadowblayde paused, eyes fluttering closed, and rapidly mimed a series of motions in midair before applying them to the mechanism's controls. The hum quieted and the door sagged open. "Then the Consulate decided it was an 'under-utilized neighborhood.' They cut off the aether to power Inventor's Fair construction." Her mouth twisted as she closed the door behind them. "Funny how all the 'under-utilized neighborhoods' just happen to be the ones renegades live in. But they swear they'll pipe it back down at the end of the month," she rolled her eyes.

He smelled the fear and stress before he heard the murmur of conversation. When they passed around the corner, the sound stilled.

"Just me," Shadowblayde waved. "Anyone seen Mrs. Pashiri today? We think she was with Renegade Prime."

An vedalken boy appeared from nowhere and attached himself to Shadowblayde's arm. "Va—!" he began.

"Shadowblayde!" the elf hissed.

The vedalken backed up a step, eyes flickering between the elf and her cloaked companion. "Um, yes. Miss Blayde. I mean, Shadow. Ma'am. I'm...glad you're all right." His young eyes glistened with dewy admiration.

The elf puffed up, and balled her fists on her hips. "No bumble-thumb Consulate inspector could nick the wily Shadowblayde!" she declared.

"Excuse me?" a human woman in a singed gold and azure robe stood, wincing when she put weight on her left leg. She had a magnificent mane or hair—not flat and trailing, not tied up in knots. It rose tall and proud. "I was with Renegade Prime. We separated, but I was on my way to meet her when..." She trailed off, agitated, smelling of bitter exhaustion and acrid fear.

He stepped toward her, lowering his shoulders and stooping. "Please. Can you tell me what you saw, Miss..?"

"Tamni," she said. "I, uh...when I got there, the Consulate had her surrounded. One of them had her by the arm. He had a false limb. Not an attachment, a replacement." She frowned, eyes looking into the distance of memory. "Only three fingers. Dark metal. Lit violet instead of aetherblue. It looked...primitive."

In the shadows of his hood, where none could see, his jaw tightened. "And Grandmother Pashiri?"

Tamni swallowed. "She was there too, off to one side. And three other women I don't know. One had red hair, one dressed in black, another in green. The inspectors took Pia—took Renegade Prime away. The strangers argued for a minute, then the one in black left. Pashiri led the other two away. Toward Kujar."

Kujar. A wealthy neighborhood, wide and green, home to many of the Consuls themselves. Difficult to enter, heavily patrolled. His presence would be questioned.

Tamni's eyes spilled. "I just...I just watched." She spat the words on her own feet.

"Are you a warrior?" he asked.

"A war—no! No, I...I just build things." She stared at her singed and shopworn fingers.

He considered laying a hand on her shoulder, in support. But no—he did not know her well enough to presume such familiarity. "To charge rashly into battle, unprepared, is not courage. It is foolishness. It yields only greater death." He kept his voice low, but firm. "This is knowledge hard-earned. Please trust it."

"I should have done...something," she whispered, wiping her eyes with the back of a hand.

"You witnessed. You told her story. Now others know what they must do." He bowed to her. "Thank you for this."

Tamni said nothing, and turned swiftly away to the shadows.

"That's a bother, isn't it?" Shadowblayde said. "Kujar's all spread-out, like. Big lawns and trees and such. Lots of walls and guards. And you stick out, friend, even though you slouch all the time." She turned to the vedalken boy. "Dayal! Gather the troops."

His grin was blinding. "Right away, Miss Blayde!"

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm the best lifecrafter you'll ever meet," she said, cheerfully. "But I'm not the only lifecrafter." Dayal scurried through the room, picking out people with mechanical beasts perched on them, or sitting close at hand. "I've got my insects. Others have birds, rats, cats, snakes, frogs, and even some little yap-yap dogs. There's only one giant you. But there's thousands of little creations like ours in Ghirapur."

He'd not planned to bring anyone else into these troubles. "I can follow her trail myself."

The elf laughed. "No doubt. But we can find her faster. What's the saying? Many eyes make quick search, or some such? And don't worry," she chirped, wrapping her arm around his, "I shall venture beside you. Steer you clear of trouble, like. Er..." she paused, and squeezed his bicep. "If we have to punch down any doors, I suppose I'll leave that to you, then."

The space before them filled with young people bearing brass and greenwood marvels that strutted and ticked. None of her friends seemed to be over twenty.

"How do you know Mrs. Pashiri, anyway?" Shadowblayde asked.

He considered. How much to say? "She's helping me find a man. Dangerous on his own. Possibly working with someone even more dangerous."

"Man of mysteriouser!" she laughed. "Let's be off, then."

* * *

Six Months Ago

Nashi wriggled under the planks, hips scraping floor joists.

He'd found a gap in the wall in his bedroom, hidden behind the trunk they stored his clothes in. His siblings and cousins couldn't fit, and if Tamiyo and Genku knew of it, they said nothing. From there, he could scrabble quietly between the lower floors of the great library, peering out through knotholes, breathing and listening, feeling wood press close and safe on all sides. No one could see him in this personal darkness. Sometimes he'd spend hours in there, bringing toys and books in with him, listening as the other children pounded around searching for him.

Sometimes it was all right to be the littlest and slowest.

He slithered toward the dining room, where Tamiyo and Genku sat with the giant. The smells of the food were weird. Not just the dry browns and sharp greens they normally ate. There were also greasy reds, with dust-black traces. It curdled in his chest, made the back of his throat jump forward, though he couldn't guess why. He pinched his nose, breathed through his mouth, and moved on.

There was a knothole in the corner that let him look down across the whole entire room. Tamiyo sat on her usual cushion at the head of the low table, with Genku at her right hand. The giant—Ajani—loomed over the far end, picking politely at a plate covered with marbled brown cubes. Meat. He remembered meat. It made him sick now.

Genku rose and bowed to Ajani. "There are matters I must attend to. If you will excuse me?"

The giant blinked. "Oh. Of course. Please."

Genku leaned to kiss Tamiyo on the forehead. She smiled and closed her eyes, laying her head briefly against his chest, their arms and fingers twining like ivy. "Take care of your business," he said. "I'll keep the children busy."

"Thank you," she said. "I'm sure they've already tired my parents." Genku gathered their plates and left, sliding the door closed with a foot.

The giant sat uncomfortably. The wind chimes toned and clinked. In the corner of the room nearest him, the ceramic charcoal stove still smoldered. But when Nashi looked at it, his heart beat too fast and his fingers dug into the wood, so he watched Tamiyo watching Ajani instead. The violet sigils on her forehead were tight-coiled with worry.

When Genku's footsteps had faded, she spoke. "You went to Theros seeking Elspeth. Did you find her?"

"Yes." Ajani looked like would say more, but then didn't. Instead he looked around the room, and gestured toward a pile of luggage with a thick journal on top. "Have I come at a bad time? It seems you're preparing for a journey."

"Do you know the plane of Innistrad?" she asked. The giant shook his head. "I spent some months there last year, studying the moon. It's fascinating." She leaned forward, eyes wide and shining. "All the magic of the plane bends toward it, is patterned by its cycles. Even many of the native creatures..." She paused and fiddled with the cuff of her sleeve. "The last time I checked in with Jenrik—a local I work with—he reported anomalous observations. Changes in the patterns of mana, the run of tides. I'd like to observe the effects on the native life."

"I see." He laid his massive hands on the table and stared at them.

"Ajani," she said, "if you will not speak to me, why have you come?"

The giant breathed slowly, massive weights moving behind his face. "I... I did not see Nashi last time I visited. He's not like his siblings."

Tamiyo sighed, the way she did when she and Genku were arguing, and he tried to leave her to her books. "Nashi is a nezumi. One of the rat-folk of the swamps."

Nashi squirmed in ceiling, wanting to listen, dreading to hear.

Tamiyo said, "Some years ago his village was burned by Planeswalkers."

The breath stopped in his throat.

"Burned? But why?"

The charcoal stove breathed beside the giant, monstrously.

"I don't know. Not precisely. It was at the behest of a planeswalking criminal named Tezzeret. He wanted them to bend their necks. To serve his consortium."

The glowing charcoal spit red-gold light across the floor, dancing and flaring and eating and growing and darkening everything that wasn't it. He scratched at the spot on his side where the fur came in patchy. Where the skin stayed red and jagged.

He had to go.

"Tezzeret? I've heard of this man. Elspeth...she met him on Mirrodin."

He had to go now.

He closed his eyes. Pushed away from the knothole. Shuffled backward in the dark. He rolled on his side, certain the hammering of his heart on the ceiling would be heard. Bang, bang, bang, bang—

"He worked with her enemies. That was...two years ago?"

Night and stars. Heat and pain in rolling waves. The roof's on fire! Take the boy! Get out!

The huts are ablaze. Everything is hot and bright, a yellow like sick. Mama lifts him. Runs. Where's papa? Stop, where's papa? Can't leave papa!

A crash. Mama stomps to a halt. He peers over her arms. The huts have collapsed. The way out is blocked. There's fire behind them. It rises up on two legs, bellowing at the stars. Roofs burst into flame as it stalks through the lane, trailing sparks.

Art by Slawomir Maniak

"Two years? Impossible, Ajani. Tezzeret died...three years ago, I think? Betrayed by his comrades. Nashi's village, those that survived, they killed him. A dragon bargained for the corpse."

"...a dragon?"

You're going to run and not look back. Mama's fur smokes around the words. No matter what you hear, you run.

She wraps her arms around him and leaps through the flames. Pushes him on. Staggers. Go! Run!

He runs. His skin cracks at every painful step. He wants to lie down, dig into the earth. Mud is cool. It will be all right if he can bury himself.

A scream. He looks back--

Mama's on fire, held aloft by a man of living flame. She's shrieking, twisting in the air--

She smells like burning meat.

He sobbed. Just once. He couldn't help it.

The conversation fell silent. He put his hands over his eyes and curled in on himself, shuddering in the secret dark.

A shuffling of silk below. Tamiyo's quiet voice, just outside his hidey spot; "Please come out, Nashi." She pushed up on a panel of the tiled ceiling, opening a space for him.

He should run. Hide. Go to the smallest, farthest corner of the tunnels until he wasn't the littlest and the slowest anymore, and no one would make him be it for hide and seek, and no one would laugh, and no one would poke at his patchy fur and lumpy skin, and say he was just a mangy freak.

The moonfolk lady murmured into the tunnel, a voice just for him. "Do you remember what I told you? You can come sit with me if you want."

He tumbled into her arms and buried his face against her chest. The world swayed as she moved and sat, settling him into her lap. Warm arms wrapped around him. He bit his lip and tried to keep still. The giant was out there. He was tall and strong and had big tooths and probably never had to—

She tucked her chin over his head and began to rock him. "It's all right to let it out now. I have you."

The tears came hot and fast, and they wouldn't stop.

"Actions have consequences," Tamiyo told Ajani. "Sometimes people like us...forget how big our feet are."

* * *

A mechanical tailorbird, an uncanny simulation of life, swayed down on the greasy smoke from a food cart. The core of it was mossy wood, dotted with flowers; the frame white-gold metal; the wings brightly-dyed silk. It fluttered, extended cunning brass legs, and delicately alighted on Ajani's broad shoulder.

He looked at the little round creature in puzzlement as it peeped up at him in regular, staccato rhythms, as Grandmother's brass bird did. "Is this...speech?"

"Mm?" Shadowblayde's moonlight eyes turned up to him, her cheeks bulging with roasted poultry. "MM! MMF!" she pointed at the bird with her stripped kebob stick and swallowed some of what she was chewing. "Mihir!" she said around the rest. She swallowed again with effort, pounded her chest, and dropped the stick into a bucket of other empties by the cart she'd bought it from.

Although "bought" might be stretching the definition of the word. The owner of the cart, a venerable and inscrutable elf, had watched with a twinkle in his eye as one of Shadowblayde's mechanical spiders fished a coin from the purse of a passing Consulate inspector, and deposited it in his hand with a stiff and ticking bow.

They were on the edges of Kujar, in a bustling marketplace that divided it from a less attractive neighborhood. A place, Shadowblayde said, where people came to slum or to hobnob, depending on what side they entered from. She seemed endlessly fascinated by the passing crowds, pointing out people she knew and telling him a hundred charming and forgettable stories about the history of the street.

He had a pounding headache. The musical device installed on the opposite side of the square had been piping and blapping madly since they arrived, its lights throwing lurid colors across the cobblestone. The tinny high notes and gut-quivering bass hurt his ears.

Art by Volkan Baga

"That's one of Mihir's birds. The codes we all came up with together. Brilliant, yes?" Shadowblayde grinned, teeth bright against her dark skin. "Pashiri was spotted twenty minutes ago. The Dhund."

"Good," he said, trying not to yell over the din. "What's the Dhund?"

"You know Gonti's night market?"

He nodded. An open secret; a sprawling illegal exchange, run in the shell of an old energy plant—a relic of the time before aether. Inventions of questionable safety and dubious morality could be had there, for the right price or the proper favors.

"The Dhund is a headquarters the Consuls built under and through Gonti's market. A maze of tunnels and rooms pieced together. Ducts and sewers and suchlike. They run their spies out of it, and keep important prisoners there. All terribly secret, you understand," she winked.

A guild of law operating in sewers, hidden under the feet of disrespectable citizens. Everything in this world was upside down. He looked toward the sunset. "I know how to get to the night market from here. How can I find a way into the Dhund?"

Shadowblayde looked offended. "I show you to a door. We know a few of them. Won't be a problem."

He shook his head. "You're not coming."

Her mouth collapsed in a flat line, brows collapsing. "You are not going to—!"

"Shadowblayde," he interrupted, "this was a trap set for Grandmother. It will be harder to get out than in. Help from the outside will be needed. Can you find us a means of escape? Something fast. Secret."

She inhaled sharply, eyes darting over the bricks of the wall nearby, not truly seeing them. "Thopter," she said, looking up. "The Consulate's are all mass produced. Same strengths, but the same weaknesses. Renegade Prime showed me how to steal one."

He regarded her critically. "Did she teach you to fly one?"

"Let's say mostly?"

"Mostly will do."

"Here," she said, and poked the mechanical bird on his shoulder. She whistled and chirped a long series of notes that sounded like two birds arguing. It flapped its wings and returned a cheerful peep. "He's yours now. When you're close to a Dhund entrance, he'll fly to it."

"Thank you." He turned to go, but her hand fell on his shoulder.

"You're a friend of Mrs. Pashiri. She wouldn't have told you our code words if you weren't. Now you're stepping into the Consuls' jaws for her." She put her chin in the air, and one fist on her hip. "I say you're a renegade now. Anyone who says otherwise has to quicksmith me. But you never told me your code name. Terribly rude, you ask me." She folded her arms across her chest and tapped her foot crossly.

He blinked at her, at a loss. "I don't have...Some have called me 'White Cat?'"

Shadowblayde gave him a critical look. "That's not even a bit dashing. Why'd they call you that?"

He paused. The idea was foolish. But the elf had helped him, trusted him, and never asked a thing in turn.

He pulled back his hood.

Her moonlight eyes grew wide as saucers. He could see his every feature reflected in them; the white fur, the blue eye and the lost one, the whiskers and broad nose.

Then she smiled. "A pity to keep such a noble face hidden."

He bowed to her; not as they did in Kaladesh, but as they did in the Naya of his youth. These people were kind, but so very strange. "I place myself in your hands, Shadowblayde." He pulled the hood back over his head.

"Vatti."

He turned back to her. "Pardon?"

She gave him a lopsided grin. "That's my mundane name. Vatti. You gave me a secret. Only fair. Now keep that bird in one piece. Mihir will be expecting it back, and I shouldn't want to owe him." She turned and scurried up a drain pipe.

He turned and inspected the nearest wall, flexing his hands within the brass gauntlets.

Window sill. Loose bricks. Rain gutter. Across the dim blue aether tube connecting to the next building.

The path was clear to his eye, as clear as a snapped fern, as a riverbank footprint.

He hurled himself upward, springing on the tips of his feet, sure metal fingers clamping into brick-gaps, locking around wrought iron. The mechanical bird uttered a soft squark and took a tighter hold of his shoulder.

He raced across the aether tube, the smoke of the old elf's kebobs curling and churning from his passage.

Then there was wind.

The scents of the city pressed into his nose. Shadow-cools and daystruck-heats flickered over and past. His motion became thoughtless, instinctual.

He dodged around a chimney, or perhaps a tree.

The spaces he passed through were a blur of brass and white marble. He didn't know them. He didn't have to.

He leapt across an alley, or perhaps a chasm.

He knew how to run. The heat in his legs, the sharpness in his lungs, the sun on his shoulders—these were old friends. A long youth of racing across plain and through jungle, swift and silent as heat lightning.

He slammed on to the back of a great bird—or perhaps a thopter—and used it to leap up to a higher cliff, or perhaps a roof.

The mechanical bird uttered a short, soft perp. He jogged to a halt, breathing deep and even. "Where?" he asked on the exhale. It spread silk wings and fluttered away.

They had come to the edge of the night market, the smells of the city fading to grease, aether, rust, and papers too long idle in a basement. Beyond the nearest row of buildings, the jumbled, muggy roar of a crowd resounded.

The bird perched on a pile of splintered, oil-stained timbers, turning its head this way and that. It perped again.

Behind the lumber, a door. It was sealed with a locking device, not dissimilar to the one on the renegade haven.

He leapt down, sending up a cloud of sun-parched dirt. The mechanical creature peeped to him—not like a bird, but in the code-speech it had used before. It fluttered before the lock, tiny wings blurred and snapping, and used its slim beak to press a series of blocks on its surface. The faint hum of aether charge faded, and the door sagged open.

"Thank you," he murmured to the bird. It peeped again, and darted away.

He pushed into the cool shadows.

A figure in crimson slid away from the wall, sunlight shining white on the edge of a blade. "Where do you think—"

Within the gauntlets, his hands curled into paws. He backhanded the guard into the wall and winced at the sudden scent of blood. "Sorry," he muttered to the unconscious body.

He pressed deeper into the blue-lit tunnels, away from the guard, nose flaring. He pulled back the hood of Grandmother's cloak and let his ears turn this way and that, listening for footsteps.

The Dhund was filled with unpleasant scents. Heavy old sweat, cloying urine, too many people confined in too small a space. It reeked of despair and the disappeared. Of teeth in the dark.

There. Faintly, from a tunnel to the left. Summer fruits, roses, hyacinth, and honey.

He hurtled through the tunnels, chasing the scent of her sun-drenched parlor, slipping around pockets of footsteps and muttering.

An open space ahead. The blue-white light of afternoon sun.

He glided to a halt, listening, tasting the air. Murmurs, bent and shattered by too many echoes to be understood. The deep keening of metal and an unfamiliar hiss. Boots on stone. A muffled pounding.

He moved in cautiously.

The room was made of circles. Brass rings stretched from floor to vaulted ceiling, connected by sweeping arcs of catwalks. Oval windows just under the eaves let light in from high overhead.

The room smelled of Grandmother, but she wasn't there.

Near the center of the room, two guards in crimson and gold scrupulously ignored some manner of...box. Squat dark metal, huffing and whispering unpleasantly to itself. There was a scent he didn't recognize, a bilious sweetness that coated the back of his tongue. He could see a door on one end, with a small inset window.

A fist struck the glass. Then a hand, weakly.

He couldn't see the faces from here. He didn't need to.

The hand slid downward.

* * *

Five Months Ago

They'd closed most of the doors. The clouds were towering and gray, a pile of soaked cotton bearing the scent of rain.

Ajani had laid his possessions out on the floor. White cloak, bronze armor, his enormous weapon. Nashi peered at it all from the doorway as the giant carefully rolled his futon for the third time. Every day it took him several tries; his hands were too large, the movements still strange to him. Ume and Hiro had offered to help. Rumi had thrown up her hands and skipped out into the back garden. She was cartwheeling through the mist in exactly the way Tamiyo had told her not to, her robe a sodden mess, pearls of water dripping from her nose and ears as she laughed.

Tamiyo had left last week, telling them to take care of Ajani while she watched somebody else's moon.

Still the giant knelt, patiently folding, tying, rolling.

"You can come in if you wish, Nashi," he said.

He slid across the room, toward the giant's axe. It was strange, dark on one end and light on the other. He wondered if that meant something.

Gingerly, he pressed one finger against the edge of the shining blade. It seemed thick. Harmless. The giant looked up.

"Shouldn't it be sharper?" Nashi asked.

"It doesn't need to be. Speed makes it cut. Weight."

He pressed harder.

"Be careful. It's not completely dull." The giant picked up the rolled futon and put it in the closet.

He sat back and looked at the face carved into the flat of the blade, a cat-face with bared teeths and a long thin beard. "You're leaving, aren't ya?"

"Yes," he said.

"Where ya going?"

The giant studied him. "To find the man who killed your family. Our friends found him in a place called Kaladesh. Someone's given him money and secrets. He used them to buy his way into power."

Nashi scratched his side, where the fur grew funny. "I seen him, you know. When the shamans kilt him? We was all in the woods. Watching."

The giant sighed. "They shouldn't have made you watch."

He blinked. "They said it was impro-tent."

"Important?" Ajani began strapping on the plates of his armor.

"Yeah. Because he done wrong by us. We hadda see it done right. It was about honor, so we hadda see. Thass what they said." The sky rumbled. He rubbed his nose. "He had a weird arm. Another man cut it off. When that man talked, it didn't make sense, and my head hurt."

The giant hefted his weapon, and slid it into the straps across his back. The edge of the dark blade glittered coldly.

"Are you gonna kill him?" Nashi said.

The wind kicked up, making the porch chimes clatter and clack. "I...don't know." The giant looked out to the terrace, his hand falling on the white cloak. The whole world smelled of suspended water, aching to fall. "Maybe that's the right path after all. There are too many who don't watch where they walk."

Ajani picked up the white cloak in both hands. There were faded patches on it, off color, pink like cherry blossom petals. He pulled it to his face and breathed in, deeply.

Art by Volta Creation

"Does that make you sad?" Nashi asked.

"What? No." The giant blinked and straightened, brushing under his eye with a thumb. "This belonged to a friend. Elspeth. It's a reminder of her."

"Where is she?"

"She's..." the giant ran his hand over the fabric. His eye was like the sky, Nashi noticed. The blue had gone gray, clouded over. "...I lost her."

Oh. "Like I lost my parents, you mean."

The giant closed his one great, bright eye. "Yes."

Nashi swallowed and looked out at the towering clouds. "She's dead."

A tremor went through the giant. "Yes," he said, softly. Hot glass wound away from his scar. "Elspeth is dead."

The sky rumbled. Rumi was yelling about something in the back garden. He tried to remember what the shamans told him when mama and papa died, but couldn't remember much. Everything had felt like the garden fog back then, numb and cold and close. He'd watched the man who'd done it coughing up blood and silt, and felt nothing. Sick, maybe.

He'd felt nothing for a long time. Mad, sometimes. Like when people said he had to call them mom or dad. There were a lot of people like that. He didn't remember much of them. Until the moonfolk lady had come from the library, to ask for his story and tell her own in trade. "Call me Tamiyo," she'd said. "Nothing more."

The wind swirled the flower petals on the porch. He stuck out his foot and pinned one under his toe. "Tamiyo says when you lose someone, it's like getting hurt. I mean, like when you fall down and get hurt? When you scrape your knee, it's gotta bleed ta get better. And she said that tears are how your heart bleeds. You gotta let them out so's ya get better."

The giant's jaw rippled. "Tamiyo is wise."

"When I get sad, she sits with me. Maybe I can sit with you?"

"I think I would like that."

The giant curled his legs under him at the edge of the porch, where the library ended and the sky began. He laid his axe on the wood beside him. Nashi sat on the other side, dangling his feet in the clouds. The blue of the sky was almost all gone now. The distance muttered.

He rested his head against Ajani's shoulder. His arms were as big as tree trunks. "You wanna maybe tell me about your friend?"

The giant said nothing.

"You don't have to."

The rainclouds flashed and grumbled. He spread his whiskers into the wind.

"She was born in a place of darkness," the giant said. "She never spoke of it much. A land devoured by evil, ruled by monstrous creatures. The kind that don't kill. The kind that make you their own. They hurt her until she was part of the way they hurt others. She held on, cried, and dreamed. Until the day they came for her. She was in their claws when she wished herself away."

"She could walk behind the air," Nashi said. "Like you and Tamiyo."

The giant nodded. "She woke in a different land. It was brighter, with a sky full of stars that scampered and twirled with color. But she was very young, and that world is...not as kind as it could be to the different. She walked on, until she came to a place where the sun was warm gold and the people were kind. They gave her bread, wrapped her in blankets, and held her until the shaking passed. She stayed there many years. They taught her to protect herself, then to protect others, and then to heal those who hadn't been protected."

A pale hand laid itself on the giant's other arm. Hiroku had entered silently, as was his way, and looked out at the piling clouds.

"I met her then, for the first time, as the world was changing. She saved my life. It was my world too, in a way, and we fought together to save it. But the land that had become her home was scarred and sickened by the battle, and all she could see was what had been. She walked on, until she'd forgotten the best version of herself..."

The giant trailed off, his one eye searching for the horizon. The distance had gone away into mist, gray and formless. "She was sought out. By me and by others. The monsters of her childhood had returned. They had left their own bleak realm. Another world was being turned, a place shining clean, cool, and fine. She went to fight them."

Ajani paused. He looked to the axe lying beside him on the wood. "I can't imagine," he said, "facing the nightmares of your childhood. Seeing them with eyes grown and knowing they're real after all. Real, and hungry. She walked into their teeth with a trembling heart and steady hands. She fought until there was nothing left to give, no reason left to fight, for everything in that shining land had been stained black. The monsters won. And she ran from them again."

Cousin Ume knelt gracefully, in a rustle of silk, folding herself like an origami swan. She laid a hand on the giant's knee, lavender eyes bright with sympathetic stars.

"She returned to the land of colored skies. That was where we met again. In that land, she'd become a renowned hero and an infamous villain, bearer of a weapon crafted by—by those who hold themselves our betters." A shadow crossed the giant's brow, there and gone. "Something had happened. Something had broken within her. She never spoke of it, but you could see it pull at her heels. She walked as if into a wind, shoulders bent, eyes never entirely forward.

"That land was nearing an end. For its so-called masters, we journeyed to the end of the world, and stepped among the stars. We fought a monster, and won. And as thanks—" he clenched his hands on his knees, the great black claws digging in. "As thanks, another monster struck her down. Right—right in front of me. And I could do nothing. Nothing."

Behind them, Rumi sniffled. She stood in her garden-soaked robe, looking embarrassed, fiddling with one of her ears. She swayed on the sides of her feet, looking at the door, and escape. "Dummy," she breathed at herself, or maybe he imaged it, and abruptly draped herself over the giant's broad shoulders, squeezing his neck tight, burying her nose in his pale fur.

Ajani did not look up, but laid one of his great hands over her small and slender ones. "I went among the people," he said. "I told them her story, as I'd witnessed it. They had to know. They had to remember. It had to matter. I walked and spoke, and did not rest until the words had taken root, and were growing on their own. It was important. And it meant...I didn't have to think."

They were all around him now, listening to the story in silence. Cousin Ume. Big brother Hiro, big sister Rumi. The sky flashed and quartered, cracked.

"In the stories my people tell—the old ones, the ones that matter—the hero loses her mentor. She lives, grieves, and moves on to save the world."

The clouds rumbled. Poofy-headed rain charms spun and danced on their strings. Nashi didn't know what Tamiyo would say, so he said nothing. Sometimes Tamiyo said nothing, and that was the right thing.

At last, Ajani whispered, "It should have been me. Not her."

His big hands were shaking. The sharp hidden claws, the long tooths, the arms like tree trunks.

"My hero is dead," said, hoarsely. "And all she wanted, all she fought so hard for...was just a home. The simplest thing. The smallest."

Nashi put his arms around the giant, but couldn't reach even halfway. "It's all right to let it out," he said. "We all got you."

Ajani's shoulders bent and shuddered. He covered his eyes with one hand.

The rain began to fall.

The children sat with him, around him, a forest of hands on his shoulders and arms and back and knees. Saying nothing. Just breathing.

It rained for a very long time.

* * *

A fist stuck the glass. Then a hand, weakly.

He couldn't see the faces from here. He didn't need to.

The hand slid downward.

They were killing them.

How

Doing it slowly.

Dare

Letting them suffer.

They

Ajani vaulted over the rail, teeth bared.

Grandmother's gift-cloak slid from his shoulders in flight, revealing the white beneath.

He flicked controls within the false hands. They unclasped and fell away.

He slid through the air like summer lightning, bright and silent.

It was like the axe had never left his paws.

He ran on the balls of his feet, an endless fall forward.

Somewhere behind him, the gauntlets clattered to the floor.

A man stared up at him in horror. Dark hair. Thin moustache. Brown eyes. A wave of stinking, soaking fear rolled off him.

Ajani swung for the throat.

Sometimes people like us...forget how big our feet are.

Old magic welled up, streaking along his spine. As it had with Tenoch, so many moons ago; in a life so far removed, it now seemed like the tale of another man. The guard's eyes gaped, black pits of fear, and Ajani vaulted through them, seeking the titanic light that lay beyond.

For an endless instant, he held the shining palace of the man's soul in the palm of a hand, and took its measure.

A youth spent feeling out of place, seeing gray where others saw brilliant color. The sighs of a disappointed father; "Just not an inventor, I suppose." A life of standing in the background for others, waiting for something to happen. Love for a wife with a long braid and fingers perpetually lightning-burnt. An infant that peals with laughter when he makes faces. Mornings off, waking with the sun, he fills a cramped kitchen with the scents of bread and spice.

A snowflake with a billion glittering facets. Here and there, buried in shame-deep crevasses, there were twisted shapes, yes, dark moments...slicknesses that wouldn't wash away with a lifetime of scrubbing.

But far fewer than Ajani's own soul.

Not a Planeswalker. Not a villain.

Just a man.

Ajani slid his foot, changing the angle of his axe-blade's fall.

It smashed across the guard's chestplate, scattering twisted metal shards across the marble floor. He tumbled to the ground, spinning from the force of the blow.

Art by Chris Rallis

No blood.

The other guard stumbled back, nervous fingers rattling his sword free of the scabbard. Whirling around, Ajani gave him a long, one-eyed glare, letting his axe's dark blade come to rest on the marble with a modest clink.

The man dropped his sword and scrambled for the door. He'd sound the alarm. There wasn't much time.

Ajani glanced at the controls for the container. Levers and dials, spinny bits and blinking lights. It made no sense to him. No matter.

He slammed the bright blade of his axe into the gap between the door and the container. With a grunt, he leaned into it, and pressed. Breath by breath, step by step, arms and legs rigid and quivering with effort, he peeled the screeching machine open.

The door fell off its hinges with a reverberating crash, a rush of green smoke rolling skyward.

An emerald-eyed elf sat cross-legged before him, cradling an unconscious red-haired girl across her lap. "Mrs. Pashiri?" he asked her.

The elf nodded over her shoulder, "There." She lifted the red-haired girl like she weighed nothing, and stood aside to let him enter. Her eyes slid away from his. "I...did what I could."

Grandmother lay eyes closed and barely breathing. But her expression was peaceful, her hands clasped at her stomach. Like any other afternoon he'd found her napping on the parlor couch. The rest of a life well-lived.

When he ducked out of the chamber with her, the red-haired girl was stirring in the elf's arms. She coughed weakly and blinked. "Nissa," she croaked. "Lemme down?"

He laid Mrs. Pashiri carefully on the marble floor, silver braids spilling around her. He laid one hand on her stomach, and closed his eyes. Brackish poison had settled in her lungs and veins, clotting the blood, drying it to ash. He sent brilliant threads of magic through her, burning away the black, filling her blood with clean air.

Her eyelids fluttered, and she coughed. He helped her sit up. "Are you well?" he said, quietly.

"Ajani," she smiled. Then she squinted and put on her best disapproving face. "You look thin." She patted his cheek. "Have you been eating properly?"

He rumbled in the back of his throat, in spite of himself. "Yes, Grandmother."

"Hell," the red-haired girl gasped, and coughed again, dry and hacking. He looked up to see her grab on to the elf's arm as her knees buckled, the coughs building in intensity until she was folded nearly in two. A drop of blood trembled on the edge of her lip.

Nissa inhaled sharply at the sight of it, and rubbed her back. "You should sit," she said, her strange eyes bent with worry. "Please, Chandra."

"Just a dry throat," the red-haired girl rasped. "Be fine in a—" She exploded into coughing again, spattering the floor with red. "Oh. That's not good..."

Ajani carefully lifted Mrs. Pashiri to her feet. "Excuse me," he told her, and turned to the two other women. "Hold her up." The elf nodded and pulled Chandra upright.

"Whoa, big kitty," Chandra wheezed. Her breath smelled of hot copper. "Got arms like Gids."

He wondered what gids were. He laid a hand on her shoulder and closed his eyes.

The thunder of her heart was deafening. Strong, urgent. No wonder the poison had burned through her blood so swiftly. Silver tendrils of healing magic raced through her, cleansing the impurities, soothing a thousand tiny burstings. Her breathing quieted and slowed.

He opened his eyes. "You'll need to take it easy for a time," he said. "I've cleaned out the poison, but your lungs—"

"...Will be fine," she said, ducking her shoulder out from under his hand. She forced a smile, and wiped the blood off her lips with the back of a hand. "Thanks. I mean it."

Nissa said nothing, but nodded to him with fragile gratitude. She hadn't taken her hand off Chandra's back.

There were shouts echoing from the hallway. The guards were assembling.

"You next," he told the elf, though she didn't seem much affected by the poison.

But she shook her head, glancing toward the thunder of oncoming boots. "I'm fine for now. You know a way out?"

The air in his ears vibrated with the stuttering pulse of oncoming thopter wings. In the far corner of the room, one of the windows smashed and fell in a wind-chime cascade of broken glass. The brass tailorbird fluttered across the room, perping urgently, and alighted on his shoulder. Nissa looked at the mechanical creature in perplexity, perhaps uncertain whether to judge it a miracle or a horror.

"We have a ride," Ajani told her as a coil of rope slid down from the window.

"Ajani, were you just going to leave these here?" Grandmother scolded from across the room, stooping to pick up his dropped gauntlets. "Gan Ghaheer spent weeks on them."

He'd... explain later.

The guard he'd struck groaned at his feet, and rolled on to his hands and knees. He froze at the sight of boots, and slowly, by reluctant fits and starts, looked up.

"Go home to your family," Ajani told him.

The man gazed up at him with terror and wonder. "You're not going to kill me?"

"I don't kill," Ajani said. "Not anymore."

8

In this Very Arena

By Doug Beyer

Chandra and Nissa went looking for Chandra's mother Pia, using Mrs. Pashiri's Kaladesh contacts. But instead of finding Pia, they found themselves trapped in an underground Consulate prison facility. Only the timely arrival of the leonin Planeswalker, Ajani, saved them from having to make a deadly choice. Liliana has left without the others, concerned about Tezzeret's presence on Kaladesh, while the rest of the Gatewatch, Jace and Gideon, remain on Ravnica.

* * *

RAVNICA

The carnarium was crowded, loud, and full of minds. Performers swung on long chains tethered to the ceiling, teeth and spikes gleaming. Jace sat in a middle row, out of range of the acrobats and fire-swallowers, but in the center of the laughter and noise.

Art by Jason Felix

The Izzet mage who sat down next to him wore a mizzium gauntlet that arced with streaks of energy. Jace sensed the concern behind Ral Zarek's electric aura. He opened a mental ear to the mage's mind.

"The Guildpact is a—" was the thought front-and-center in Ral's mind, followed by a colorfully vulgar and startlingly visual torrent of phrases.

Jace sighed audibly.

Ral muffled a laugh. "Just testing if you could really read my thoughts."

"Test successful," Jace thought. He faced the stage, eyes on the Rakdos performers. Just a regular audience member, cloaked in noise. "We could have done this back at the Hall of the Guildpact, you know. Unless you really wanted to take in a show."

"All your official visitors there are recorded and tracked," Ral thought. "Not safe."

So Ral wasn't here as a concerned member of the Izzet guild. He wanted to talk to Jace as a Planeswalker. "What is it, then?"

"An irregular planeswalk." Ral's mind paused, either to let that sink in or to come up with how to form the next thought. "Someone planeswalked away from Ravnica in a manner that was...anomalous."

"What? Who? How do you know this?"

"You've seen the clouds outside, Beleren. Don't make me do all the work."

“Project Lightning Bug?”

"There you go."

Jace furrowed his brow. "I thought that was shut down after we sabotaged the results."

"It was, officially." Ral's thoughts coiled in on themselves. Images of magically-created lightning storms and sensitive sensor mechanisms swam through his mind, along with memories of conjuring careful half-truths while Niv-Mizzet's hot breath bore down on him.

Jace couldn't help tilting his eyes to the side, to see Ral's expression. Worry lined the man's forehead.

Ral's mind continued. "The detectors still trigger when someone planeswalks. I glance over the results from time to time, but mostly I keep them hidden from Niv-Mizzet and most of my guild. I reached out when I saw Vraska's planeswalk."

Jace was deeply un-thrilled to hear the gorgon's name.

"She left Ravnica," Ral thought, "with no destination."

"No destination?"

"She didn't planeswalk to a plane. Only from one."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Exactly."

"A flaw in the detectors?"

Ral gave an impatient flick of his hand. "The experiment performed perfectly. The pattern of the departure was authentic, but the endpoint recorded as anomalous. Vraska hasn't been seen since. It's like she planeswalked into a void."

Jace saw the electrostatic pattern in Ral's mind, the recorded planeswalk that faded into a distinct patch of nowhere. He felt how much this troubled Ral. No other finding in his experiment had shown this pattern.

Art by Slawomir Maniak

"That's fascinating," Jace thought at him. "Wait. Are you saying you can still see when I leave Ravnica?"

"First to Zendikar, then off to Innistrad, was it?" Ral was still watching the performers, but his elevated eyebrows were all for Jace's benefit. "So, will you be staying long this time? Or should we expect you to leave Ravnica without its Guildpact again soon?"

"That's... Uh... Ral, listen—"

Ral stood up to leave. "Anyway, I thought you'd want to know. Vraska was none too fond of you, last I heard."

"I—Thank you. Ral, wait."

Jace fumbled over annoyed audience members, following Ral as he made his way out of the theater. "Ral…" He followed the Izzet mage out to the street, and caught up to him.

"Stop worrying," Ral said, gesturing with his gauntlet. "I won't give away all your secrets. Just remember there are those who'd love to be in the position you've blundered your way into. Maybe consider putting in a little effort while you're still here, all right?"

"I will," Jace said. He thought then of Lavinia, who was convinced Jace was still in his office right now, hunched over a sheaf of papers, dutifully doing the grunt work of maintaining the delicate balance between the guilds. Or maybe she had already discovered the studious illusion he left behind, and was in the midst of yelling "GUILDPAAAACT!" at the ceiling in that way that she did.

A finger tapped Jace's shoulder. Jace turned, and Liliana stood before them, a faint perfume of another world on her.

She glanced at Ral, and looked at Jace, grim as the grave. "You. Kaladesh. Let's go."

Ral crossed his arms and raised those judgment-brows as high as they would go.

Jace gritted his teeth and said in a low grumble, "This isn't a good time."

Art by Dave Kendall

"Don't care," Liliana said. "This takes precedence." She held her shoulders back imperiously, but Jace noticed she was shifting from foot to foot. Her usual, lightly cruel teasing had been replaced by clipped demands.

"Did you find Chandra?"

"I found someone else," she said. "Tezzeret. Alive and well."

Jace suddenly found himself incapable of swallowing saliva, and he choke-coughed.

Liliana shot glances at the sky, the cobblestones, and the wheels of a passing vendor's cart, looking everywhere but directly at Jace's face. She spoke in low tones. "I know. I'm as unhappy about asking you as you are. If I had any other choice—look. Come to Kaladesh. Bring the muscle."

Before Jace could respond, her form began to shimmer. It wasn't like her to planeswalk in the middle of the street, in front of someone she didn't know. When she was gone, Jace and Ral looked at each other. Jace had a hard time finding words.

"Let me guess, Guildpact," Ral said. "You…" Jace shrugged slightly, his hands splayed in utter lack of excuse. "…have to leave." Jace's head sank slightly into his shoulders.

Ral jabbed a look at Jace, gave a sharp shake of head, and walked off. Jace's brain conjured up an array of possible explanations, but none of them seemed adequate. Instead he collected himself, took a breath, and dodged down an alleyway to fetch Gideon.

* * *

KALADESH

Nissa scanned for the authorities. It seemed they were safe for the moment, she and Chandra, pausing under a bridge with Mrs. Pashiri and the tall cat-man. No Consulate soldiers, no Dhund agents—just the hum of the city around them. One of those huge, heavy vehicles rattled along the bridge above them, sunlight flickering through the gaps in the tracks. Nissa winced at the tangle of light and sound, but at least they were free of Baral's trap.

"That was a very good thing you did, Ajani." Mrs. Pashiri beamed, squinching up her cheeks, supporting herself with a handful of his bicep fur. "Thank you."

"You gave me a scare, Grandmother," Ajani rumbled gently.

"Thank you, Ajani," Nissa said. She hadn't seen any others like him on Kaladesh, and wondered how to phrase the sticky question. "Have you been...here long?"

"Where I'm from, I'm less...unusual," Ajani said, adjusting a cloak around his significant shoulders. "We've been following Tezzeret's movements here for weeks."

Mrs. Pashiri patted Ajani's big paw. "Chandra is looking for someone, too. Her dear mother, Pia. Taken by Tezzeret's soldiers."

Nissa glanced at Chandra with furtive concern. The pyromancer was pacing like an anxious show horse, kicking at the mosaic patterns of the street.

"I'll get Grandmother Pashiri to safety," Ajani said. "And then I think we should fan out, spread our search across the city."

"Good," Nissa said. "With everyone working together, I'm sure we'll be able to get some sense of where they—where they might've…. Chandra, what is it?"

Chandra had become a pillar of fire. She stood stock-straight, facing the opposite side of the street. Her hair was aflame. They followed her eyes up, up the sides of the towers.

The banners unfurled themselves, rolling down the spires via some kind of un-scrolling mechanism. They were huge and identical, printed larger-than-life, imagery drawn in exaggerated lines. A stylized Head Judge Tezzeret stood tall, surrounded by lines of light. Huge letters arced above his head: "INVENTORS! COME WITNESS THE SHOWDOWN OF THE CENTURY."

Glowering from the banner's corner, surrounded by ugly jagged lines, was a caricature of Pia Nalaar.

The lettering at the bottom shouted: "HEAD JUDGE TEZZERET WILL FACE THE RENEGADE CRIMINAL PIA NALAAR. THE ULTIMATE BATTLE OF INGENUITY. THE GRAND EXHIBITION."

Finally it read: "NOON TOMORROW!"

"Chandra," Nissa said softly.

"He's calling me out," Chandra said. "I have to face him."

"He is. But we just got out of one trap..."

"My mother is alive. That's all there is."

Nissa looked back and forth between Mrs. Pashiri and Ajani.

Ajani nodded. "That's all there is. But the four of us won't be enough to..."

Three armed soldiers in Consulate uniforms were crossing the street toward them. One of them pointed directly at Nissa: "That's them—over there!"

Nissa instinctively reached out to sense the living roots under the road, preparing to feed their growth to entangle the soldiers' legs. She wondered, with a glance upward, whether she could take this whole bridge down to cover an escape. Ajani snarled and reached for the shaft of the huge double axe on his back. Chandra was already ablaze, but her fingers bent as she faced them, readying little comets of fire. Even Mrs. Pashiri took action—she produced a small automaton, which spun a set of interlocking wheels and came to life.

But as the soldiers approached, their forms swam and their silhouettes wobbled. Their very bodies seemed to trickle away in rivulets like watercolors, revealing something else in the canvas underneath. As the distortion cleared, their faces became familiar: Jace, Liliana, and Gideon.

"It seems this is a matter for the Gatewatch," Jace said.

Nissa abandoned her spell and wiped a hand down her face. "Your disguises work a little too well. We were about to injure you very badly."

"Just trying to blend in," Jace said. "We heard Tezzeret is here?"

"He's here, and he has Chandra's mother," said Ajani.

"What's a leonin doing with you?" Liliana asked, sizing up Ajani.

"What's a Gatewatch?" Ajani asked, looking down at her.

* * *

Unlike the dozen-dozen-dozen thopters patrolling the city, one particular thopter hovered in midair.

It was identical to the dozen-dozen-dozen others, with its rotors humming and its lens swiveling within its glass cornea. This one, though, held itself in the air, having paused its route. Its aimed its lens down at several humanoids on the street below, and a tiny brass shutter snapped rapidly. A series of internal gears and prisms pressed the reflected light images into crystallized aether, frozen on little copper plates affixed to a drum within the thopter's chassis.

Satisfied, the particular thopter tilted its stabilizers, spun up its auxiliary rotors, and gained altitude.

The thopter buzzed past the rooftops and kept going, swinging past a vee of migratory cranes. It angled flaps to evade the flight pattern of an overly curious drake, and soared until it aimed itself at a dark shape on the sky. A small round port opened in the enormous wooden undercarriage of the airship Skysovereign. The Skysovereign accepted the thopter and swallowed it whole, and the opening closed smoothly behind it.

The thopter landed belly-down on a set of mechanical grippers attached to a conveyor belt, and the rotors buzzed to a halt. The grippers cradled the thopter as the belt carried them up through a lightless mechanical duct in Skysovereign's abdomen. The grippers released suddenly, letting the thopter roll into light, and it rode a swifter conveyor through Skysovereign's reconnaissance bay. It trundled there, dropping from one conveyor to another until it clicked into an ornate metal carousel. The carousel rotated, delivering the thopter into human hands.

Consul Kambal set the thopter down on a desk. He flicked the cap of a tool, twisted the tool in the thopter's belly, and clicked open a panel. He removed the drum of images and held the plates up to the light. With each plate, he murmured to himself. He selected one in particular, one that showed the target, Nalaar, daughter of Renegade Prime. She and her compatriots had spied the banners.

"Where's the courier?" Consul Kambal snapped.

A young woman appeared, hands at the sides of her uniform. "Message, sir?"

"Alert Inspector Baan. The bait is set. Prepare the confiscation."

* * *

Pia looked down at the links over her wrists and thought of her daughter. Jewel-like manacles bit into Pia's skin just as they had intoChandra's, just like that day when Chandra was eleven. Pia leaned her shoulder against the wall to which she was affixed, in one of the service tunnels behind the arena. "Backstage."

It must have been just like this for her, she thought. The waiting. Hot humiliation building. Just like that day, a man would smile at the crowd, preparing a metallic arm for a spectacle of violence. This was even the same arena, which Pia guessed was a special insult just for her. This was the place where Chandra had searched the stands for her mother before being torn out of the world.

Pia's greatest hope was that she would not see Chandra in the stands today either. Just stay away, dear daughter, she thought. Stay safe. Stay alive. The banners claimed this would be a quicksmithing exhibition—an inventor's duel using improvised materials, between the Head Judge and the infamous Renegade Prime. But she knew how lies worked. Tezzeret wouldn't display her just for the Inventors' Fair. She was bait.

She could hear the loudspeaker filter through the walls from the arena outside. An announcer was proclaiming that Rashmi had won top prize at the Fair, to an explosion of cheers. The Head Judge's voice was a crackle of showmanship as he described all the benefits of the privilege of working at his side. More cheers, although the sounds were joyless and blunted by the corridors.

An officer arrived with the jingle of two sets of keys. Pia didn't look up until the man spoke, because she recognized his voice—full of gravel and malice.

"Ready to do your part, Nalaar?" Baral said, lifting off his mask. The pale burn scars on one side of his face pulled at his smile, making his back teeth visible on one side.

Pia thrashed against her restraints, but calmed herself. A wave of revulsion swept through her, but she raised her chin and looked past him. "Whatever obsession you have with my family," she said, "whatever ill fragment of your brain tells you that punishing us can somehow make you worthy—it doesn't matter. Because nothing you do can ever harm her."

"Oh, but of course you must not have heard," Baral chided her. "They came looking for you. In the entirely wrong place, sadly. A daughter's rescue attempt that sadly went awry."

She flashed a look at him in horror, but remembered that his was a liar's face. She stared back out at the arena, and bit words through her teeth one at a time. "If you harmed a hair..."

"We'll have to see, won't we?" Baral asked. "Will she be here? When Tezzeret humiliates you out there, will she come for you?"

Just stay away, daughter, she thought. Please, do as your mother says, this once.

"It's time, Renegade Prime," he said. "If you'll come with me?"

He took her restraints and pulled, but she yanked her wrists away and walked under her own power.

They paused at a short flight of steps leading up to the glare of the noon-lit arena. Consulate guards escorted the elf Rashmi and several other inventors down the stairs past them. They were absorbed in breathless discourse. Excitement floated with them like cologne, to the point that they didn't even notice Baral removing the links of Pia's restraints, nor the guards gently separating them from their prizewinning inventions as they swept past.

"And now, friends and citizens," purred the announcer. "We ask that you please remain in your seats for the final act of today's exhibition. The quicksmithing match that will surely be the talk of the Fair. Announcing the first competitor, your honorable director of the Fair, Head Judge Tezzeret!"

Pia didn't even hear the cheers now—her mind raced. Through the doorway she scanned across the stands. She could see no renegades in the crowd, no Chandra, no sign of anyone she knew. Tezzeret's people must have maintained tight security on the entrants, weeding out all her allies—maybe she wouldn't be bait after all. Her only hope was to be as entertaining as possible, to win over the crowd—to do what she could to stay out of cells and manacles.

"So glad I could be here to see you off," Baral said, his back teeth showing. "I would never miss the chance to say goodbye."

What did that mean? A cold feeling swirled in her gut.

The announcer was calling her to the floor. "And now, friends and citizens, his opponent," the voice boomed. "She's the convicted aether criminal who failed to destroy your Inventors' Fair...Pia Nalaar!"

Baral nudged at her back with a blade, and she stepped up to a chorus of jeers and boos. She walked over to her mark, eyeing Tezzeret. He stood across the arena, not even bothering to egg on the crowd. In front of her was a container covered in an embroidered cloth. An identical container sat before Tezzeret.

The announcer's voice began as a hush, and built to a manic pitch. "Now, in this historic arena, we come to the final challenge. Now we decide who the greatest of these two famed inventors shall be. Keep your eyes on this match, citizens of Ghirapur, for it will truly define the future of our city and our world. Let the showdown...begin!"

Art by Chris Rallis

Pia whipped the cover from the container and quickly assessed its contents. An assortment of gears and metal plates. A few pieces of blown glass. A basic aether fuel line. Some rudimentary tools. Not much to work with. Not much that would thrill a crowd.

She glanced up. Tezzeret was already rooting through his pieces. He had something with legs half-built already. So fast!

She jammed her hands into the container of supplies, and at the touch of metal parts, her inventing intuitions came to life. She played to her strengths, snapping and fitting and spot-welding. She let the components tell her what they wanted to be, like her old inventing days...and a basic four-winged design began to emerge. She gave it a light chassis for speed and a stinger on the nose. If only Kiran were here, he could bring it some additional maneuverability, maybe to play to the crowd a bit...

Focus. Just get it flying.

She punched the aether line into the pinion assembly and the thopter came to life, to an audible "Ohhh!" from the crowd. She sent it buzzing at Tezzeret, hoping to distract him as she worked on her next design.

Tezzeret had already built some silvery crawler of some sort. It unfurled, rising taller than him, displaying an undercarriage of sharp pincers and legs. The crowd clapped furiously. How did he make that from the provided parts? Is he even trying not to cheat? The thopter orbited Tezzeret, slicing around his head with its stinger. He batted it away effortlessly as he sent the crawler toward her.

Art by Izzy

She quick-fashioned a rudimentary servo, welding its plates into place even as it scurried away toward the crawler. The crawler scuttled forward and tore into the servo, ripping it apart. But Pia had embedded a surprise—a small detonator. The servo burst in a small sphere of smoke and pieces, and blew the legs off the crawler. A huge reaction from the crowd. Maybe I can do more than delay the inevitable. Maybe I can win.

Pia jumped forward to salvage parts from Tezzeret's crawler. Sure enough, it was full of parts she didn't have access to—and even metals Pia couldn't identify. She tore through its chassis and began harvesting it for another creation, hoping her thopter would continue to distract her opponent.

She battled on, folding components together to create radical new designs. But no matter how clever her devices, Tezzeret threw back something that was impossibly faster, stronger, more durable. She was sure she was out-engineering him, yet his devices began devouring her own, consuming her supply of parts.

She turned to dash back to her container, but a pointed metal limb stabbed into the floor beside her, and she fell. She looked up, and saw a newly-created crablike automaton, her thopter skewered on its leg. The thopter fluttered its wings weakly, and went dead.

Art by Izzy

She glanced over at Tezzeret. He was striding over to her, raising his metallic right hand. Bands of metal curved unnaturally at his will, coiling in on themselves to become a small squad of other sharp-legged automatons. They stood up, a silver-shouldered and faceless army, and began to surround her.

The crowd was chanting Tezzeret's name, cheering his victory.

"You've lost, Pia Nalaar," Tezzeret said, just loud enough for Pia to hear. "And now, in the very place where your daughter faced justice for her crimes, I will mete out proper justice for yours."

He raised his arm, and the army of chrome automatons marched in toward her. The metal of the nearest automaton's chest rearranged itself, forming a sharp slicing limb. Tezzeret held his arm high, looking down at her with a gleam in his eye.

He's not just playing to the crowd, she thought. He's going to kill me.

Tezzeret slashed downward with his arm, and his metal creation attacked. Pia tried to roll out of the way, or to deflect the inevitable blow...

The automaton dented, then lurched sideways and crashed onto its side, smoking from a glowing-hot wound. The crowd gasped, turning to the origin. The bolt of fire had streaked out of the audience, originating from an angry-looking, fire-haired young woman.

* * *

"Not yet!"

"How many times have I told you, Jace?" Chandra thought back. "Least. Favorite. Words!"

Chandra leaped from the stands onto the floor of the arena. The illusion spell had done its best to conceal her, but fell away into shimmering shreds when she started in with the pyromancy.

"We have to understand what's behind his presence here," came Jace's urgent thoughts. "Keep him occupied!"

Her mother looked surprisingly stern. "Chandra, get out of here right now," she said. "This is a trap!"

"Uh, yes, I know?" Chandra said, gathering mana for a fresh fire spell. "And I'm here to bust you out of it."

"That's just what he wants!" her mother snapped. "Leave me and go. Now, young lady."

"I'm not young anymore," Chandra snapped back. "And I'm not losing you again!"

"Is that you, the smaller Nalaar?" Tezzeret was pressing his asymmetrical hands together. "Joining the competition that your mother just failed? But this is so touching."

Chandra could see spectators all around sitting forward in their seats, charmed by the family drama. "I'm not going to build against you, Tezzeret," she said. "But I am going to beat you."

"But here?" Tezzeret cooed. "In this very arena? Do you dare face me in the same place where you were once about to be—"

"YES," Chandra insisted. "I get it. Where I was about to be executed. Very poetic. Now can we please fight?" She focused on a spot on her palm, and a ball of fire grew in her hand.

Whispers raced through the crowd. Consulate soldiers hurried in to surround Chandra, to arrest her. But Tezzeret raised a hand to halt them. He conferred briefly with one of the soldiers, then dismissed him and turned to face Chandra in a fresh light. His automatons turned along with him in unconscious puppetry.

"I will face you, child," Tezzeret announced, now playing to the audience. His automatons took a step forward. "But just you versus me would not be much of a fair fight."

Chandra tore the ball of fire in two, and both her fists went ablaze. "Nobody said anything about a fair fight."

A host of illusions dissolved behind Chandra, and one by one, a team of Planeswalkers emerged.

Art by Eric Deschamps

Her compatriots drew weapons and readied spells. Chandra noticed that Tezzeret, for his part, took a nearly imperceptible step backward.

After a moment of silence, the crowd came to their feet with a cacophony of shouts. As far as they knew, Chandra thought, this was part of the show, the dramatic finale of the exhibition. "Take them down, Head Judge!" some yelled. "Kick his ass, renegades!" others fired back. A few voices called out, "Tezzeret cheats!"

"Chandra," came Jace's voice in her head. "I think his automatons are still blocking my telepathy somehow. You've got to get us in closer."

"Blow up metal things," Chandra thought. "Got it."

Art by Raymond Swanland

As soon as she saw Ajani and Gideon rush to protect her mother, Chandra unleashed. Fire flew, slamming like fists into Tezzeret's machines, felling one after another. One automaton melted on the spot. One got close enough to slice at her off side, grazing her cheek, but it immediately became the rusty centerpiece of a spontaneously-grown vine garden.

At the bidding of Tezzeret's curved metal claw, scrap metal bent and reformed into new mechanisms, crawling under Chandra's blasts of fire and extricating themselves from Nissa's vines. As they advanced, Chandra threw punches that became jets of fire, dimly aware of Gideon and Liliana covering her flank, and Nissa and Ajani crushing a stray automaton that threatened her mother.

The audience took a moment to decide exactly how to react. Frank displays of deviceless spellcasting were rare on Kaladesh. But Chandra could hear them opting to cheer on the spectacle.

Tezzeret staggered back, and for the first time Chandra thought she saw a hesitation before his next assault. She thought at Jace. "Have you read him yet?"

"No," Jace thought, his mental state coming through like a swear word. "Something's still blocking me."

"Hurry up!"

"He's too closed off," Jace responded. "We've got your mother. I think we should go."

Chandra looked at her mother, and back at Tezzeret. "I think I should end this. Right here." The flame on her fist extended down her arm, and her vision blurred with fire.

Jace's thoughts had a tone of warning. "Chandra, if he knew to block his mind, it means he was prepared for this. He knew all of us were coming. We've made a mistake..."

Chandra's fist closed, compressing fire into a tiny point of blinding, seething heat. Her teeth clenched, and she trembled. "I could just..."

Liliana's thought carried through the telepathy clear and sharp: "End him."

A stark shadow passed over the arena, and Chandra looked up to see the airship Skysovereign eclipse the sky. Its majestic bulk spanned the entirety of the arena, hovering with a droning churn of internal engines. An enormous turret swiveled on its underside, crackling with aether, its cannon aiming down—not firing, but threatening to fire.

With a broad grin, Tezzeret announced to the entire arena, "And this concludes the Inventors' Fair, everyone. To the brilliant inventors of this world, I say sincerely—thank you." He gave a gracious little bow, and rose from the ground on a column of filigree steel.

A panharmonicon played an anthem, and a few celebratory fireworks popped off the towers around the stadium. The sounds were garish and odd against the utter silence of the crowd.

Chandra's eyes flicked down to the hot point of fire in her palm, and up to Tezzeret's rising face. He was retreating. After threatening her mother, he was getting away.

"It's over," Nissa said quietly, next to her, and Chandra was startled how desperately she wanted someone to tell her that. "Another time. It's over."

Chandra nodded to her, holding in a brimming wave of gratitude and relief. The pinpoint of fire compressed in her fist dissipated into nothing, forgotten.

As a child of eleven, Chandra had looked across this arena, searching the stands, holding onto the slim hope that she might see her mother's face. She never did. Now, in this moment, she looked across the arena again, and found her simply standing there.

Her mother held her arms open. Chandra ran and fell into them.

Chandra had indulged in imagining a moment like this a thousand times, while staring out across the smoking volcanic flats of Keral Keep. If she could have just one moment with Mom again—what would it feel like? Would her mother still smell faintly of welding compound and rose petals? What would she say? What grand thing could she ever say that could sum up her affection, her gratitude, her longing to be home and safe with her again?

She opened her mouth, and her eyes blurred, and all that spilled out of her was, "Mom…I'm sorry."

Her mother murmured something comforting into her hair, pulled her in, and squeezed her close.

Art by Howard Lyon

* * *

Above them, Tezzeret rose and rose, the filigree unfolding to stretch him into the air. The Skysovereign welcomed him into its hull, and closed up again with him inside. The panharmonicon continued playing in empty celebration. The crowd was silent as Skysovereign slowly turned and moved away, and the sky turned bright again.

It was only as people started to leave that Chandra heard them start to shout in protest. She moved through the crowd, her arm around her mother, and the others followed them out of the arena. She was starting to notice the new strands of iron gray in her mother's dark hair, and the lines in her face, when the crowd became dense with distressed faces, loud with rising panic.

A woman with ornate golden ornamentation around her dress emerged, facing Chandra and her mother directly. "My name is Saheeli Rai," the woman said, "and I must talk with you, and you, ma'am." Her face was deadly serious.

"What is it?" Chandra asked. "What is happening?"

"The inventions. They're gone."

"What?" Pia and Ajani said simultaneously.

"I think they took Rashmi and the others," Saheeli went on, "along with every device that was entered into the Fair. The winning inventions. The passion projects. Rashmi's breakthrough. They're all gone. Taken. I saw what you did in the exhibition...Can you help?"

Now Chandra could hear what everyone around her was shouting about. They were inventors, competitors in the Fair. "My creation!" "I spent everything on that design!" "How could they just take them?" Consulate soldiers and automatons were out in force. She couldn't remember security being this tight when they entered the arena.

"This was Tezzeret's plan," Pia said with a scowl. "This was all one gigantic distraction."

"We have to get out of the stadium, and regroup," Jace said. "And then we have to stop him. He's planning something."

Ajani snarled low. "He's building something."

9

A Grateful Consulate

By James Wyatt

The metal-mage Tezzeret intended to make an example of Pia Nalaar by facing her in a public contest. But the Planeswalkers of the Gatewatch, drawn to Kaladesh by Tezzeret's presence here, interrupted the contest and freed Pia Nalaar from Consulate custody. But Tezzeret's schemes are never straightforward, and even the public spectacle had another purpose—as Dovin Baan is learning now.

* * *

Dovin Baan shook his head, annoyed. All around him, a deeply flawed plan was unfolding in utter chaos.

Throughout the fairgrounds, Enforcer-Chief Ranaj's soldiers were seizing inventions in their characteristically clumsy fashion, with automatons lending an unsubtle threat to back up the enforcers' legal authority. Arguments had erupted on every side, scuffles were breaking out here and there, and inventors were loudly expressing the expected range of emotions, from outraged fury to crushing despair. And through it all was an undercurrent of panic, a press of the crowd away from the arena, where Tezzeret should have been holding his demonstration against the renegade, Pia Nalaar. But Tezzeret had been carried off to the Aether Spire on a Consulate flagship, so that was where Dovin had to make his way—through all this chaos.

If Tezzeret had just consulted me before setting the enforcers to work, Dovin thought, everything would be going so much more smoothly.

"You!" he barked at a nearby enforcer whose sash identified her as an officer. "It is necessary to disperse that cluster of citizens before they opt for a more violent expression of their frustration." The officer followed his pointing hand and nodded in acknowledgement. She opened her mouth to repeat his instructions, but he wasn't finished.

"In addition, that man must exercise more caution in handling that sword, or he will sever a limb—his own or one belonging to another citizen. That cart cannot support the weight of the so-called 'mana vault' that is being loaded into it, and you must ensure that none of your enforcers are inspired to set foot inside it." He had been the one who ensured that the device, a product of the Aetherological Society, had been surrounded by a fence at the fair, for the safety of all observers. He winced as an axle broke under its weight and six strong soldiers staggered around, trying to keep it from tipping over onto any of them.

The officer ran toward that disaster, forgetting all his other warnings in her haste, and Dovin sighed. It was up to him, then, to prevent the next disaster. He hurried toward the knot of restive inventors, grabbing two enforcers by the elbow as he drew near.

"Move along your way, citizens," he said. "For your own safety." He shoved the two soldiers ahead of him, and they started guiding people away. Good. Next.

Ah, too late again! The oaf with the sword had already cut himself. Fortunately, the wound was much less serious than it could have been, and someone was already kneeling beside him, tying a tourniquet above the wound on his arm. Dovin nodded, satisfied that the care was sufficient—but still irritated that it was necessary.

Nearby, an inventor cradled an elegant thopter device in her arms as if it were a child. As an enforcer stepped toward her, Dovin saw immediately how it would all play out: the enforcer would wrest it from her arms, the inventor would shriek her anger and try to grab it back, and the Bastion automaton that lumbered up behind the enforcer would have to restrain her. Would it take that much longer to do it right? Show your badge, explain your purpose, promise to treat it with the greatest care, ensure that the inventor's name was attached to it.

But apparently that was too much to ask. Before he could make his way there, the scene played out exactly as Dovin had known it would, and the automaton had to hold the inventor at bay until she pulled away and stormed off in the other direction, clearly prepared to take action.

Art by Joseph Meehan

It was a flawed plan, poorly executed. He had come to expect better from the Consulate he loved. But then, he had also grown accustomed to being consulted, to having the opportunity to refine such plans before they were put into place, instead of scrambling to clean up the mess left behind. The Consulate had recognized his talents, which accounted for his rise to the position of senior inspector, overseeing new designs and setting safety standards. And Tezzeret had seen his potential as well, his ability to spot flaws not just in inventions but in the intricate complexities of the Consulate bureaucracy, the Inventors' Fair, and Tezzeret's own rise to power. Yes, Dovin had seen that, too, and subtly helped the metal-mage correct a flaw or two in his schemes. And Tezzeret rewarded him for it.

What happened? he wondered.

Had he lost Tezzeret's favor, somehow? Did Tezzeret hold the arrival of these other Planeswalkers against him? Dovin felt himself growing defensive. Contacting these Planeswalkers—this "Gatewatch"—had been the best possible course of action under the circumstances, given the information available to him at the time. Tezzeret could not blame him for that.

Well, the damage was done. The Planeswalkers were here and the enforcers were doing what Tezzeret told them to do, and it fell to Dovin Baan to fix it—as indeed he struggled to fix everything he could, throughout the city, within the limits of his ability. His talents had their negative aspects, given how difficult it was for him to leave uncorrected the flaws that he saw. He could not stand by and watch his city, his Consulate, descend into chaos.

As he made his way closer to the spire, a blast like a trumpet sounded over the plaza. Just ahead, an exquisite lifecraft construct in the likeness of an elephant—the inventor had even gone to the trouble of reproducing its blaring sound—swung its head from side to side, knocking enforcers to the ground with its huge, spiraling tusks. The soldiers tried to duck out of the way or prod the lifecraft beast with their own spears, but the metal spearheads clanked uselessly against its metal plating. Dovin pursed his lips as he hurried toward the commotion.

I cannot be in all the places required, he thought, to ameliorate the repercussions of this inadequate decision-making.

He grabbed the arm of an enforcer and yanked him backward just in time to avoid the elephant's lashing trunk. "Listen," he said.

"I'm a little busy!" the enforcer snapped.

"If you are busy with no plan, you might as well be idle," Dovin said. "Listen and watch."

The enforcer blinked at him, confused, and Dovin took the opportunity to explain. "Watch. When a spear is thrust toward the lifecraft animal's throat, it rears up on its hind legs. Without fail. It then kicks out with its front feet. Here, tell them."

"Go for the throat!" the enforcer yelled, and one of his fellows obeyed.

With a trumpet, the elephant reared up and lashed out with both front feet, sending the obedient enforcer sprawling on the pavement. Dovin sighed.

"Look there," he said, pointing at its belly. "The quality of the work is shoddy, typical for renegade construction. A cable near the hips is exposed whenever it rears up in that fashion. All that is required is to sever the cable, and the entire automaton will collapse."

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

The enforcer nodded and inched back into the fray, trying to get close enough to do as Dovin had instructed. Dovin crossed his arms, keeping one eye on the elephant as he scanned the crowd for the renegade lifecrafter responsible for this untidiness.

"Ah," he said, spotting an elf in the crowd.

He stepped forward and took hold of a different enforcer's shoulders. "The task of severing the cable falls to you," he said in her ears. He shifted her a little to the left, just as his most recent pupil provoked the elephant into rearing up again.

"Go now," he said, gently pushing her forward.

The elephant turned slightly at her approach, lashing out with its trunk. She dodged it—well done, Dovin thought—and managed to catch the exposed cable on her polearm. Shifting her grip, she yanked, the blade cut the cable, the elephant fell—

And its trunk sent the elf lifecrafter sprawling to the ground.

Dovin pointed him out to the enforcers. "Take the elf into custody to answer for this disturbance." And he strode on—No more distractions!—to the Aether Spire, to find Tezzeret.

* * *

Dovin reached the spire and saw Tezzeret striding down a hall, barking orders. He hurried to catch up with the head judge and put a hand on Tezzeret's arm.

He yanked his hand back from the feel of jagged metal under the sleeve. Of course: he had previously assumed that the glowing claw at the end of the sleeve was a distinct device, perhaps mounted to Tezzeret's arm, but now he realized it was part of the arm—based on his brief touch, he could extrapolate the shape of it under the loose cloth. A replacement limb? And far from elegant in its aesthetics, though it appeared highly functional. Interesting, and odd that Dovin had not noticed it before. Had Tezzeret been hiding it?

"What is it, Baan?" Tezzeret said. His posture shouted impatience, even as his face attempted to project an unshakable calm.

"What is this?" Dovin countered, sweeping his arm behind him, to encompass all the chaos of the Inventors' Fair being dismantled. "What possible circumstances could render these draconian measures necessary?"

Tezzeret pointed over Dovin's shoulder with his metal hand. "I take it you didn't see what happened in the arena," he said.

"Your invention contest with the renegade? An overdramatic move with endless potential for disaster, which I believe I brought to your attention as soon as you made your intention known to me."

"I was referring specifically to the gang of six Planeswalkers who interrupted that duel and disappeared with the renegade." Tezzeret's face clearly showed his frustration now. "I don't remember you outlining that possible disaster."

Dovin counted on his fingers—there was the younger Nalaar, of course, who had been complicating the range of potential outcomes since her arrival on the plane. The telepath, the elf, the warrior, the necromancer...he held his smallest finger. Who was the sixth?

Art by Eric Deschamps

"They have emboldened the renegades," Tezzeret said. "The situation is getting out of control."

"But was all this necessary? Why confiscate their inventions, and in such a clumsy and heavy-handed manner? A quick survey of the square should make it clear that these actions serve only to further provoke and, as you say, embolden those who would resist Consulate authority."

"Relax, Baan. It's not as though we're stealing their inventions. We're safeguarding them. We wouldn't want such priceless inventions damaged in a renegade attack."

"There's no need to sway my opinion on the matter, of course, but—"

"And these devices aren't thoroughly tested, as you well know. They're not safe. We can't leave that much unlicensed technology just lying around the city."

"Such a thing would be irresponsible, of course," Dovin said. "But it would have been more productive to explain that rationale. Instead of sending Ranaj's enforcers to wrest devices from the hands of their grief-stricken owners, we could have sent bureaucrats with forms to complete, complicated assurances, soothing nonsense words."

"There's no time," Tezzeret snarled under his breath.

Interesting, Dovin thought. Tezzeret's whole posture changed, just for a moment—as if a fit of rage had seized him, squeezed his body, and as quickly released him.

Dovin adopted a soothing tone. "I'm sure that taking extra time to preserve to peace and public safety is entirely worthwhile. It is certainly true that some of these devices have enormous potential to damage person and property—"

"Yes, tremendous potential. Don't you see? It's far better that Consulate inquiriums take this technology and explore its potential, rather than leaving that work in the hands of who-knows-who. We can develop it, refine it, perfect it."

Dovin paused for a moment. "Yes, of course. Such development was essential to the plan for the Inventors' Fair from the beginning. The advancement of technology for the betterment of society, under careful Consulate supervision. So why—"

"And who better than you to lead that effort?"

Dovin blinked, momentarily speechless. "Me?" Of course that was the logical choice. But a moment ago, he had been thinking that he'd fallen out of Tezzeret's favor somehow. Now Tezzeret was offering him a position of tremendous importance.

"But before I can entrust you with such a momentous task, you need to clear something up. These other Planeswalkers. You brought them here?"

"Well, in a strictly technical sense, I did not, no. I invited some of them here as a safeguard against a potential fault I identified in the plans for the Inventors' Fair—specifically the renegade danger, embodied in Pia Nalaar. But the Planeswalkers refused my invitation. Only then did the young Nalaar get wind of my invitation and come here on her own. I brought only one—the elf, Nissa."

"And here is my cause for concern, Baan," Tezzeret said, putting his hand of flesh and bone on Dovin's shoulder. "I value your foresight. Your interaction with these Planeswalkers seems like an uncharacteristic mistake."

A mistake? Dovin bristled. "In fact, my decision was optimal, given the information you opted to share with me. Presented with the danger of a renegade threat, who better to confront such a danger than a group of self-professed heroes with such monumental power at their disposal? The odds that they would actually side with the renegades were infinitesimal—were it not for the existence of what appear to be personal grudges, of which I had no foreknowledge."

"And this is the result," Tezzeret said. "They challenge me in the arena. I am forced to move more quickly—so clumsily, as you rightly said. They forced my hand." He flexed his metal hand, and Dovin took an involuntary step back.

"You need to fix this, Baan. You're right that these events will stir up the renegades. So stop them. I need a secure inquirium where I can work without fear of renegade attack. You need the confiscated inventions stored and safely catalogued for your own explorations. We need the Bastion on high alert, ready to face any threat that arises. We need to remind them who is in charge here."

"You need an inquirium?" Dovin asked. "What for?"

Art by Magali Villeneuve

"I have my own research to pursue," Tezzeret said, continuing down the hall. Dovin hurried to catch up. "Rashmi's work for the fair had staggering implications. Larger than this little rebellion, larger even than Kaladesh. That will be my focus. The rest of the inventions are yours."

Really? Dovin thought. He had not seen anything else at the fair capture Tezzeret's attention in this way. "Very well," he said.

"After you clean up the rest of this mess."

"Of course." First, he thought, the Planeswalkers.

Tezzeret turned and strode off without another word, and Dovin beckoned to the nearest enforcer officer.

"Assemble a veteran squad of soldiers," he instructed, "with a measure of skill, if you please, and pursue the...the strangers, the renegades from the arena. Heed me: they have flaws that will ensure their failure if properly exploited." He counted them off on his fingers. "They lack a clear leader, so they can be pulled in different directions. The young Nalaar is volatile and easily provoked into reckless action. The black-haired woman is not fully trusted by some of the others, especially the soldier. They have a sad belief that they're heroes, and can be counted on to act as such. They will try to protect their weaker associates, such as Oviya Pashiri. And they expect that they will win with a minimum of cost or sacrifice. Exploit those weaknesses in every way you can. Go!"

* * *

The moment he stepped back outside, Dovin's head swam. The plaza was even more crowded now, presumably with members of the arena audience—many of whom were inventors who were now discovering that the enforcers were laying claim to their precious inventions, or had already removed them. Dovin again shook his head at the clumsiness of it all. He didn't even need to look around the plaza to sense all the things that were going wrong—or were about to. It was a mess, as Tezzeret had said, and through no fault of his own. But Tezzeret had entrusted the task of cleaning it up to him, and nobody—in his humble but precise estimation—was better suited to the job.

He wound his way through the plaza again, this time in no hurry, gathering a handful of Bastion officers around him as he went. After all that had already been done, the most likely point of failure now was the turning of public opinion against the Consulate, and that was not a single potential point of failure but dozens, threatening the integrity of the whole delicate machine that was Ghirapur. Scattered clumps of discontented inventors registered on his attention like biting flies—a problem for the enforcers to handle, under his guidance. Gently dispersing them with pleasant reassurances was probably enough at this point, but a few strategic arrests would also be necessary. He sent officers off to each problem spot.

Other issues were better suited to individual intervention. He made his way to the scene of an emotional flare-up, a hot-headed human inventor loudly making his displeasure known to a dwarf enforcer while a pair of Bastion automatons tried to lift an elaborate device whose purpose was not immediately apparent.

"Perhaps I may be of assistance," he said, interposing himself between the inventor and the enforcer. In such situations, Dovin had found, the characteristic vedalken calm could defuse the powerful emotions displayed so prominently by other races.

"You have no right!" the inventor yelled, bringing his reddened face entirely too close to Dovin's and jabbing a finger into his sternum.

"I can certainly understand your attachment to this marvelous device," Dovin said, running a hand over the invention's intricate metalwork. He understood its purpose now—it was designed to fabricate thopters. Clever. Of course, its many flaws also became immediately apparent, but this was not the time to enumerate them. "Truly amazing work. Your application of Dujari's principle here is ingenious." It was; he made a mental note to examine the device further once it was safely stored in a laboratory. After the dangerous aether leak, sure to attract gremlins, was closed. "Tremendous potential."

The inventor's scowl softened, and his shoulders straightened with pride. "Thank you."

"I do assure you, sir, that your device will be treated with the utmost care while it remains in Consulate hands."

"But—"

"Of course you are familiar with the process of submitting inventions to the Consulate for safety review and careful inspection. And surely you recognize that under such extraordinary circumstances as these"—he made a vague but sweeping gesture that could be taken to mean anything from the Inventors' Fair itself to this moment of Consulate confiscation—"the process must be altered somewhat. But the result will be the same. And your work might very well be the foundation for the next breakthrough in fabrication technology. The Consulate is grateful."

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

Without waiting for a response from the inventor, Dovin turned to the enforcer, who had been watching the exchange with a scowl. "Now, I recommend that you secure the services of at least one more automaton to move this device with the care it deserves. If you wait, I will send them to you."

The dwarf enforcer looked as though waiting were absolutely the last thing she wanted to do, but Dovin fixed her with a stern eye to clarify that his polite phrasing should not be taken as permission to refuse.

This was the kind of finesse that Ranaj's enforcers lacked, and Dovin very much feared that the result could be disastrous.

Similar exchanges slowed his journey from the Aether Spire all the way to the storage facility where the inventions were being taken. He calmed a half-dozen inventors, dispersed another three groups of renegades-in-the-making, and helped a containment team deal with a clutch of gremlins that had descended on the lifecraft elephant when it started leaking aether from its severed cable.

In contrast to the anxiety and tension of the city, though, a very different sort of energy filled the storage facility, and it immediately quickened Dovin's pulse. Top scientists and inventors from every Consulate inquirium in the city had been sent here with a single purpose: to undertake the monumental task of cataloging, safely storing, and investigating all of these inventions. Contained in these walls was the potential for a forward leap in technology on the same scale as the Great Aether Boom that had launched the current age of innovation, six decades ago.

And he was in charge of it all. Any doubts he had harbored about Tezzeret's good will vanished.

He could hardly wait to get started. As soon as the Planeswalkers were taken into custody and the renegades quieted. Soon.

Increased Bastion presence. Curfews, perhaps. If necessary, a constraining of the aether supply to curtail renegade activity. And given the flaws of the Gatewatch as a group, they would be captured and confined in no time. Security and order would be restored.

And then all this would be his to explore.

Art by Tyler Jacobson