Reality Fracture | Episode 10: Happy Birthday
Reality Fracture Story
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Vraska holds the body of her beloved and weeps. She watches his eyes fix, feels the pulse at his neck cease. Thanks to her, his death is quick, his suffering minimal.
She tugs him close and only notices at the periphery of her senses as the others join her. Chandra and Ajani embrace her. Garruk remains far away. She pays them no attention. Her world is in her arms, and it is still warm from life. Vraska allows herself permission to mourn; grief wells up as an endless wave.
Then, impossibly, she feels Liliana next to her.
The necromancer kneels, laying her hands on his body. There is no magic. There is no malice. Vraska sees tears on her cheeks, watches the tremble in her lips.
"It is so much more," Liliana says, too quietly for it to be a conversation. Vraska isn't certain what she means … until she remembers. She remembers what Jace shared of Liliana on that riverbed all those years ago. Will you be sad when I die? How callous she had been in response.
Liliana hangs her head close to Jace's chest, unaware that Vraska knows the context. She watches the other woman shake with grief, and Vraska places a hand on her shoulder. Liliana's gloved hand covers Vraska's, and for a moment, they weep.
"We must find a way to resolve the overlay," Ajani reminds them with gentle urgency. "He said we need to find Tam."
"No." Liliana's voice rings with absolute anger.
Vraska blinks, trying to see through her grief. Liliana's eyes are fixed on Jace's chest. She follows her gaze … and sees it. A blur, a strange blue glow.
"No!" Liliana yells, and the subject of her fury grows brighter.
It is brilliant cerulean, a searing star, a cluster of blinding light rising from his chest. Liliana leans close, tears streaking down her cheeks. She seems to know what it means. Vraska does not. She has killed beyond count, but none of them did this when they died.
"Is that his spark?" Vraska guesses aloud. She reaches out to touch it, fingers grazing the edge, but instead of the heat she expects, she feels a wave of deep curiosity, the scent of rain, the chill of a deep lake, she hears distantly in her own mind the alarm sounding from behind Liliana's eyes.
She jolts her hand back, and the spark continues its climb up, out of his chest, up into the air between him.
"Do we stop it?" Chandra cries.
"Leave it!" Ajani roars. "It's his!"
But Liliana and Vraska remain squarely focused on the light, the gorgon much more controlled than the necromancer. "What did you do, Beleren?" Liliana yells at the spark as it shoots through an open window. "What did you do?"
The crowd of Hexhaven cadets and Strixhaven students thickens around her, and Tam is carried into it like a river. She screws her eyes shut as she rides its wave, jostling shoulder to shoulder, thinking through every theorem she's ever learned, trying to find a solution to reverse the overlay, and feeling small and stupid. She isn't enough. She isn't enough.
Time feels sluggish. She turns to follow the next scream, but the world quiets as the crowd around her pauses to look at something high above. When Tam glances up, what she sees is different from any rubble.
It looks like a star.
Blue and blazing, it tears through the sky from somewhere high in the tower. It falls like a meteor, and she realizes too late the trajectory veers toward her.
The crowd of students and cadets parts, running for cover. But Tam stays put.
The pressure of duty snaps her back to the task at hand. Instinctively, she tries to alter the star's path. She flings paradoxical magic at it to turn it away, but onward the star burns, growing larger by the second, unavoidable, unmissable. She panics, runs, leaps over rubble and dodges the cadets and students in her way, but down and down the star falls, closer and closer it follows.
It hits her in the chest, and she gasps.
Energy pummels her, as if she's standing at the base of a waterfall. Tam cries out in response, falls to her knees, the pressure and potency of magic overwhelming her, filling her. Her heart feels like it's burst open, and all her insides are a modest cup doused with the water of a vast lake.
The onslaught eases from a torrent to a stream to a drip.
Her ears pop. She flexes all ten of her toes. She lets out a breath that's halfway to a shocked laugh.
What was that? She panics. Was that an attack?
Then it hits her, a rolling wave of emotion, of feeling. She inhales sharply, and it turns into a sob. Tam frowns, alarmed. She should do something. Is she dying? Is she injured?
Wait. There was something she was going to do.
Right! She remembers. I must ask for help.
Tam firms her stance and reaches out with her mind; she knows just who to call.
And she gasps as her telepathic range extends beyond its usual height, up into the atmosphere, into a place between worlds, beyond that, as far as she can reach, until she feels the familiar steel-cold rain of Innistrad and finds the help she needs.
She brushes the edges of a sky, an infinite maw, and the beast that lives within the moon stirs at Tam's psychic nudge.
You, Emrakul responds.
I need your help, Tam says.
A sensation—godlike amusement, an iceberg groaning, a giant plucking the wing off a bird in curiosity. She senses Emrakul's immensity, a galaxy crammed into a tiny moon. She feels her writhe, pleased and unfathomable.
Tam was confident, but now she's terrified. Nevertheless, she holds tight to the connection, determined. There is a Multiverse that must be consumed. It is an illusion made real. It is not natural, but it is corporeal. Will you feast at my invitation?
The angel, the monster, sends back the impression of warmth. Yes, she smiles, I have been waiting so long to be once again what I am.
Another sensation—patience, the pleased stretch of dormant tentacles.
Your knowledge is ripe. I will come to devour and to heal. The mirror will crumble, and the garden will blossom once more.
A vision: Tam sits across from an angel, a chessboard between them. The queen moves, and her king falls. Checkmate. The board sinks into itself, unspools, and a mass of unbraided hair falls from the table.
Tam doesn't remember playing chess. No matter. She sends back the feeling of gratitude, of open doors, of the elation of freedom.
Enjoy your meal.
Tam retreats and feels the electrons around her psychic senses laugh in delight. She spools herself back to Hexhaven … Strixhaven? Wherever her body is now. She feels pleased she knew just who to ask.
A wave of psychic energy roils through her. It's the star. That light. It burns cool as a stream within her heart.
This time, though, instead of emotion she feels … dreams. Goals. Ambitions. Wants beyond the material. She wants to learn how to ride a horse. She wants to eat a mango. She wants to see her friends, travel with her friends, visit somewhere wonderful. She wants to help a stranger and doesn't care if they thank her. She wants to solve a complicated problem. She wants to have her heart broken. She wants to see Vraska. She wants to swim in the sea. The thoughts are confusing, tantalizing. She didn't realize she could have wants like these. She's never had them before.
But in the world around her, Tam knows that things are getting worse. The Echoverse is crashing like a wave into the original. In Hexhaven, Tam returns to her body and stares at the sky. It darkens above her, and for a moment, she feels like a nihilist—two worlds colliding, a disaster she helped enable, the futility of certainty. But she knows she doesn't need to worry. She will find a way. She is a diplomat, a friend-maker, a Guildpact.
She looks up, and the sky turns from gray to black and violet.
The clouds peel to either side; the air crackles. She tastes ozone on her tongue. Most of the crowd, the blank-eyed Hexhaven cadets, don't have the sense to look up, but the few Strixhaven students who do are met with an apocalypse.
Emrakul engulfs the sky.
Tentacles writhe, gripping something that Tam cannot see, and the mass of wriggling flesh parts to reveal a lone silver eye. The horizon cannot contain her. Tam's mind cannot comprehend where she ends and begins. The immensity of the Eldrazi dares Tam to try and make sense of it.
She makes her way to the Folioplex, weaving through the crowd, uncertain if Emrakul will be able to tease apart the Multiverses where they've already been woven together. Her entire body shivers, as does every body in the crowd around her. Their sinuses collectively clear, and the world smells of burning hair and the moment just before lightning strikes.
Then, counter cleared, Emrakul prepares her meal.
The wriggling mass high above them seems to divide, tentacles moving aside like parted hair, and in their center is something no living being has ever seen—her mouth.
Hexhaven vibrates. It quivers through time and space, and Tam prays that the Theorist and his friends made it out alive. As the mirrored plane shakes and sputters, it begins to fade. Emrakul writhes with sated joy, and the sound of her feasting is something Tam feels in her chest. The tower turns transparent; the sphinxes circling it start to vanish.
Curious, Tam reaches out with the new range of her mind to other planes, senses as Ravnica's double fades from the sky, as the snow above Amonkhet gives way to the sun, as every double of every plane turns transparent as a ghost and is devoured in jubilant hunger. There is no double of Emrakul here for her to consume. She is singular, just as Tam is singular. Tam can feel as she sifts one Multiverse from the other, like plucking stones from unwashed rice.
As she approaches the Folioplex, a book on a table to her right flips open menacingly, and a pen scrawls down her name. This is a poor place to hide. On the steps, she finds not just Kirol, but Sanar, Abigale, and Lluwen, all watching as another world is devoured. They snap to attention as Tam approaches.
She could feel embarrassed, but instead she decides she is brave.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I can explain later, but we're going to be safe now."
A deep vibration echoes through their bones, and a colossal abomination writhes in the sky overhead, and none of the students pay either any mind.
Kirol points up. "Did you have something to do with that?"
Tam nods. "You'll be safe. She won't hurt you."
Sanar's eyebrows rise, mouth gaping in realization. "Sh-she?"
"Listen." Tam approaches them. Lluwen, Abigale, and Sanar flinch backward, but Kirol remains still. She holds her hands to her chest, feeling her own heartbeat.
"I need you all to know that I'm sorry. What happened to Jadzi is my responsibility. What I did to all of you is inexcusable. I was ordered by my maker, and I didn't know I didn't want what he wanted until I came back. Now I'm trying fix it."
"Who are you?" Kirol's eyebrows are low, their eyes stern. "Tam, seriously. Who are you?"
Tam smiles. "I can't wait to find out."
The world shakes. A seam of shining aether traces along the ground, as if drawn by a pencil.
Tam feels feathers brush against her arm. Wings pull her into a tight hug.
Abigale? Tam begins to sign before her free hand is smothered by a second hug from Sanar.
"I'm not joining," Lluwen says.
"It's all right. You don't have to forgive me." Tam extricates herself from the embrace. "We don't have to be friends."
"No, we don't," says Kirol.
They stand and assess Tam from afar, and she realizes that, just underneath the chaos around them, she can hear Kirol's thoughts curl through her own mind.
They smirk. "But we do need an introduction." Kirol puts out their hand. "My name is Kirol. Who are you?"
Tam grips their hand firmly. She decides who she is, and a chosen name spills as easily as a river. "I'm Tam. Just Tam."
They shake as acquaintances, as friends.
"Okay, Just Tam," Kirol repeats. "Know a way home?"
"Mage-ring at the back of the Folioplex," she replies, brushing her senses against the mind devouring half the sky. "Emrakul is separating the second Multiverse from the first. I'll meet you back at Strixhaven. I've got to make sure all the other Strixhaven students get back safely."
She steps back. Waves.
And as she does, her friends run for the portal home, and with a relieved smile, Tam waves goodbye … for now.
The tower begins to fade around them. Mage-rings flicker and fall, turning to thin illusions as they hit the ground without impact.
Liliana looks up from Jace's body, eyes raw. They stopped the overlay, but they cannot stop the blending. None of them know how. They are doomed.
One of the portals in the center of the sanctum glows, and out step their doppelgängers. The others leap to their feet, but Liliana stays put.
Chandra the cryomancer charges forward, her face a mask of calm, and with a splay of her hand, the ground beneath them turns to ice. Liliana starts to stand, but something catches—her dress is frozen to the ground, as is Jace's body. She tries to get up, then pauses as Ajani's axe collides with that of Garruk's double.
Beasts leap from the shadows of the druid's feet, taking hold of Ajani's arms. The sight of the Chain Veil alarms Liliana, but this other Garruk doesn't seem to notice her. Liliana grits her teeth and begins to tear her dress from the floor with a long rip.
She watches as Vraska whips her head to look at Ajani's double; the second she does, the leonin freezes in place. Stone overtakes fur, and the doppelgänger dies with a snarl on his face.
Liliana counts. Something is wrong.
She tugs her dress away from the ground, rip after rip, and mentally instructs the lich of Professor Opal to stand back to back with her. As she finally tears her dress free, Liliana hears a bellowing behind her.
Her fingers flash with violet light, and her puppet claps her hands around the original Garruk's axe. He is the picture of a beast barely contained. Liliana pushes back, her lich as strong as she is, and manages to yell above his rage, "Stop!" She grits her teeth. "This isn't the place!"
As she says it, her ears clear. The world smells of burning hair and the moment before lightning strikes. She feels the tingle of something overhead, far above the tower. There is a presence in the world. Liliana has felt this once before.
Emrakul. It could only be her. But she isn't consuming all of reality … only Jace's Multiverse. How did she escape the moon on Innistrad? How did she know to come here? Liliana remembers the spark emerging from Jace's chest, flying out the window, seeking a body. One specific body, gods damn him.
"We need to leave if we want to live," she says.
"Your curse ruined me," the druid snarls. "You will die by my hand."
"They're vanishing!" Chandra yells.
Sure enough, Liliana watches Ajani's axe swing through Chandra's double without making contact, sees the Garruk with the Chain Veil become nothing more than a ghost. Behind them, a mage-ring appears—the final lifeline for a dead Planeswalker's old friends, a way back home as the world crumbles around them.
Liliana spreads her arms, sends her lich out of the way, even as it fades from existence. "You already got your revenge! I died years ago in all the ways that matter. Kill me if it'll make you feel better. If that's where you want to be at the end of the world." The ceiling crumbles, falls. She feels her foot start to slip through the surface of the tiles.
"We're leaving!" Ajani calls.
"Vryn!" Chandra adds.
Liliana sees a flash of light as the two of them planeswalk away. She stays where she is. Garruk's shoulders hunch, twitch in contained rage. She continues to hold her arms out, unafraid. "You already won." She knows they only have seconds left before this plane—and the rest of the Echoverse—disappears.
Garruk straightens. He lowers his axe, eyes locked with hers. "I will not forgive you, witch, but tell me the truth and I will spare you. Do you know the twins?"
Liliana blinks, narrows her eyes. "The Kenrith twins? I care for them both, but I worry about the girl. If you mean them harm, then we are enemies."
Garruk says nothing and simply planeswalks away.
Liliana exhales a panicky breath. Before she heads for the mage-ring, she turns for one last look at Jace's body.
He lies in a dying world of his own making. Kneeling over him, as the vestiges of the sanctum collapse around them, is Vraska, their foreheads close.
Liliana considers her options. She could leave them. It would be easy.
Dammit.
Liliana runs toward them. Vraska looks up, forlorn, as Liliana grabs her shoulders. The gorgon's eyes are golden and empty as they flicker to meet hers.
"You don't die today," Liliana says with fire in her voice. She pulls Vraska to her feet and barks, "Hold on to him!"
Together, Liliana and Vraska haul Beleren's body through the mage-ring, away from the false Multiverse.
The world around Tam is vanishing. It's a battle between an army of ghosts and the beast who will devour them.
Her neck cranes to watch the Founder Sphinxes of Hexhaven marshal to fight Emrakul. Ingris Stingerquill screeches as barbs pierce the sides of Emrakul's mouth, and the Eldrazi bellows in response.
They fly as close as they can, wings wide, reaching up toward the titan stretched across the sky. She looms over them like a god of death. The world bends up to her, arches and architecture rising toward that central maw, clumps of buildings and entire fountains pulled from the earth as if she were a new center of gravity. The world is vanishing, lifting.
On the ground, Vigorbloom cadets summon tendrils to launch into the sky, Theorix counterparts trembling the molecules around them with a plane-vibrating spell. But they all abandon their attempts as Emrakul shakes the world in turn. Some bold Konstrari cadets have rolled out a crossbow as large as a building, aiming it at the Eldrazi's mouth, but as soon as they do, they're interrupted.
"She has marked it!" cries Uldaros Theorix, and even from Tam's vantage, she can see his magic gleam. "She is distinguishing one plane from the other!" Just as the sphinx utters this, his own matter smears across the sky and up toward her mouth.
The Hexhaven cadets scream in terror; the remaining Strixhaven students cheer.
It's horrifying. But also … it's happening. Emrakul will consume the Echoverse. No one will know that the price paid was the life of an innocent oracle and the man who fell in love with his own ideas.
She knows in her heart the Theorist is dead, but the thought doesn't make sense.
Around her, Hexhaven is marked separate from Strixhaven. The tower's colors blur sideways. An aetherborn cadet next to Tam suddenly dissipates, and every other thing—from Jace-birds to a leonin atop his puppetbeast—suddenly extends beyond its own outlines, matter pulled upward into the sky.
Tam pats herself, to make sure she isn't about to disappear, and realizes the plane-devourer high above is true to her word.
Thanks, she projects.
The electrons around her quiver. You're welcome.
Tam sits on the ground, legs crossed beneath her. She looks up at the monster, the forever-devouring beast. Tam did one good thing in her life, and maybe that one good thing is enough. She has been of service, a dutiful soldier. And she is here at the end, a survivor.
But as the world collapses, a familiar voice speaks in her mind.
Tam.
Her hand flies to her chest, to the place that blue star sank into her sternum. Is it the Theorist? No. Too small. Only a part.
It's Jace.
If you're hearing this, Tam, I'm dead. I've made arrangements for such an event. You're my fail-safe.
Tam feels tears well in her eyes.
Sparks are precious now. I made you so you could inherit mine. This spark was me, and now, it is you. I only ask that you continue our work. Make things better. Everything is in progress … just like us. May we always know exactly who we are.
The wave of psychic energy hits one final time.
Tam grips her temples as the rest of her settles into place. Her cleverness shines and glimmers, stretching across her mind like constellations in a starlit sky. Her outlook fills as a dark, alluring lake in her heart, a deep understanding of the meaninglessness—and meaning—of it all. High up, near that starry sky, stands a tower, a place to watch from … and discover far-flung truths. Around her is a fence, an unbreakable barrier, from behind which she can keep her soul safe. Her mind is secured with the fortifications of a survivor; her hands tremble with the sense memory of a thousand handshakes and diplomacies; the space at her hip tingles with emptiness, having never known holster or knife; and closest to her heart is the assurance that no matter how little she has, she may always start over.
Tam is complete. She is forever unfinished. She is a summary. She is just a person. And that is all she needs to be.
She laughs.
Her mental senses breach the dam of her body, breezing past the hundreds around her with one simple swoop. She feels immense, heavy, elated, surprised. It's as if she's discovered a door in her house where there wasn't one before, and behind it lies the vastness of the cosmos. Tam is a beginning. She is a continuation. She is the circle of a mage-ring. Tam is a clean slate.
She remembers where she is, and the bustle and panic around her feels louder than before, more real. She feels so much—sternum-punch terror, elation at seeing and saving her friends, confusion at what is happening to her. She is a detective, piecing through rubble and stowing away her panic. Does she share Jace's allergies? Does she have a high caffeine tolerance? Will his friends recognize her?
Tam freezes. Jace is dead. Her … creator? Teacher? Past self? She's sad about it, but also indifferent, because he's not dead—only transformed. She is him. They are one.
Most importantly … she's real. For the first time in her existence, she knows exactly who she is.
Happy birthday, Tam wishes herself.
She smiles. And for the first time, the millionth time, Tam's eyes alight with blue. She reaches for the part of herself that has always known how and planeswalks home to her friends, to Strixhaven.
Vraska sits with Ranna Beleren once again. There's a cup of tea in her hands, fresh funeral flowers in a vase on the table. A light rain patters on the windows. An oil lamp burns on the table.
The ceremony was small and private. Enough Planeswalkers knew of Jace's fate that she didn't feel the need to send invitations across the Multiverse. He was laid to rest as a son of Vryn, his body wrapped in cloth, sinking to the bottom of the funerary lake. A handful of friends were there, and Vraska felt ashamed to accept each condolence with an "I'm sorry" in turn. Even now, her part in this weighs heavily on her heart. All she can do is start over.
Loot is practicing his Ravnican alphabet on the other side of the table. Ranna is cleaning her relics of healing. It is a quiet morning because all mornings are quiet these days. She reads a letter sent from an old friend on Ravnica. How she wishes Jace was here so she could gossip.
Ranna rises. "More tea?"
"The oolong." Vraska smiles.
Ranna nods and walks to the kitchen and sets out two cups. Still only tea these days for her. Nothing harder.
There's a knock. Vraska rises. She opens the door, and a blue cloak fills the entryway.
Her heart catches in her chest. She prays the vision will last, dreads that it will. An uncannily familiar face stares back at her. Her cheeks are high, her hair in immaculate braids. The other gorgon smiles with enthusiasm.
"Hi! I'm Tam. We've met. In the hallway, in the, uh … other Multiverse."
Vraska can't formulate a sentence. It's like hearing a ghost, seeing a ghost. The way she stands, the angle of her head, her eyes …
"I'm supposed to find you," she says. She's earnest—sunny curiosity accompanied by the scent of rainwater.
"He made you," Vraska finds herself saying aloud. She blinks, heart starting to race in something between terror and wonder. "I'm sorry. What do you need me for?"
"Oh, I was hoping you'd tell me," Tam says. "I have a hunch you can help me."
Vraska motions to the garlands of grieving grasses on the doorway. "I'm mourning."
"I know," Tam says with a gentle smile. "So am I. We can face what's next when you're ready."
Ranna returns from the kitchen, and as soon she rounds the corner, Vraska hears two teacups shatter on the floor.
Tam pulls down the hood of her cloak. She smiles just like he smiled. Her earrings glint in the candlelight. She looks into Vraska's eyes, unafraid.
"I'm here to help make things better."
Reality Fracture Story