Reality Fracture | Episode 7: Pick Up the Pieces
Vraska can't move.
The Detective closes his eyes. She feels him embrace her. The Theorist must be stopped, he says in her mind. I must die.
"I won't let you," she hisses.
"If our body dies, this Multiverse will stop overtaking the original one. I made a plan for us to follow. We know what to do."
She knows he means the other parts, but it hurts even more. "But surely you can do it without killing yourself. Why this way?"
"Because the spell that is about to annihilate an entire Multiverse is contingent on our body being alive," says the Detective. He pulls her close, and she can smell the rain of Innistrad on his cloak.
"I hoped we'd have more time together." She can't help the sob that tumbles from her lips.
He catches the sides of her face, presses himself close. "I'm sorry. Removing the part of the spell that can be removed is the only way to make things right."
"How?" she chokes out. "How will it be all right when I've already lost you once?"
Vraska opens her heart bare to the beams. "You know I stayed with your mother after you died? We got each other through the bad days. Traded off responsibility when the other fell apart. After a while, it became easier to go outside. But anytime I stopped thinking about you, I felt guilty, like I'd never really loved you if I wasn't constantly mourning. But sometimes … you weren't an anchor on my heart. Sometimes, you were something easier to carry. And I knew, in time, that weight would become lighter … and smaller … and someday it would be a necklace I wouldn't notice—" Her breath halts, and she finds the words. "But isn't that a betrayal? To allow you to be forgotten?"
The Detective's voice is calm. "What's the evidence?"
Vraska thinks but cannot answer.
"Vraska, you would only betray me if you never changed—if you wore your mourning clothes for a century, if you stayed as you are without ever discovering who you want to be without me. Then you'd kill me a third time."
She nods in understanding, sick as she is to understand. "I hate this, Jace. Is it truly … truly the only way?"
"I'm sorry, Vraska. I'm sorry my mistake has such a great cost." His forehead is against hers. "I thought, at the start of all this, we were buying ourselves peace. Peace, and time."
She closes her eyes.
He holds her, and the sound of her cries echoes through the empty lecture hall. Vraska knows the others can hear her, knows they'll infer what is happening, but she doesn't care. He knows he must die. She wails.
Eventually, they walk hand in hand to the others. Ajani and Garruk each straddle two seats apiece, while Chandra is tucked into her own, and the three of them pause whatever tactical discussion they were holding.
"I'm in over my head, but I've thought up a way to buy all of you more time to reverse the merging," says the Detective. "You'll need to find the rest of me. We'll remain secure in your minds until you get back to the Theorist. Then, unify us with our body."
Chandra inhales with a hiss. "I'm not piggybacking any part of Jace in my head."
"I will," Garruk grunts. The others stare, confounded. He shrugs.
Vraska's eyes remain locked on the ground, but she speaks. "The Detective is asking for our help. The only way to take out the Theorist is to find the rest of his parts and deliver them to their original body."
No one says anything until Chandra speaks her dread aloud. "Take him out as in … kill him?"
Vraska can't look up.
"Is there no other option?" Ajani says softly. "Even the mind can be healed. We can help ease you of this division, Detective."
But the Detective only shakes his head. "I'm sorry, friend. The Theorist has done too much wrong, has set in motion an engine that cannot be stopped. He must be eliminated for the Multiverse to survive. If the body goes, so does his false reality. I must die."
Ajani's ears go flat with alarm. "You need not bear that weight!"
"I must." The Detective squeezes Vraska's hand, and it breaks her heart. She hates this plan. She hates it.
"Screw you!" Chandra seethes at the Detective. "You are selfish, dramatic—get off of me Ajani!" She bats away her friend's concerned paw and points to the Detective in accusatory rage. "You're not doing this! I won't let you!"
The Detective sighs. "Chandra, you know you can't win against him."
"No!" she roars. "I'm not saying goodbye to another friend! Especially not like this! You're not killing yourself from the inside!"
Vraska doesn't dare try to calm her down, especially since she agrees.
"At least Gideon had the sense to do it spontaneously!" Chandra fumes.
"Then you understand," the Detective says.
"That was different!" Chandra counters. "It was … It was self-sacrifice." She takes a step toward the Detective, tentative at first, then throws her arms around him. "Screw you. Screw you."
He doesn't debate her. Instead, he simply says, "It's not like what Gideon did. It's atonement."
Vraska closes her eyes. Her heart breaks in understanding. Payment, a tax, the death he deserves.
Still, the image of all his selves at war against himself … It hurts her soul. And to what end? What would that kind of death be like? Suffocating, vacant-eyed, a mind wiped clear of memory? To go out sputtering and scraped empty, without the comfort of friends around him? Even for all he has done, does Jace deserve that death?
"The one truly good thing you'll ever do is kick your own ass." Chandra laughs through a sob and hugs him tighter. "I hate you. I hate you."
The Detective hugs her back. "I hate you, too."
He backs away after a moment, leaving his hands on Chandra's shoulders. "The original Multiverse must survive. This is how we"—Vraska knows he means all his selves—"can atone."
"Atone implies fault," Garruk says without looking up. "You are saving the world from yourself."
And it is Vraska's turn to squeeze the Detective's hand.
"I must," the Detective affirms. "No one else can."
Vraska swallows her misery at this awful, awful choice. "The Detective says the others will unite for this plan. We'll search the tower for them, secret them away, and set them loose on the Theorist so they can destroy him from the inside. And …" She cannot finish it.
Thankfully, Ajani stands and approaches, placing a paw on the Detective's shoulder. "We will support you."
He nods, then turns to Vraska. "Ready?"
She nods in return. His body loses form, a steely blue light turns skin to vapor, and in the blink of an eye he is gone. Vraska shifts her weight from foot to foot, uncertain if it worked.
It did, says a voice nestled deep in her mind. I'll be closer than your heart's vein.
She blushes emerald.
There's a trap through the next door. You won't like what you see. That one is the one we don't care to think about.
Vraska's chest hurts. Her palms are sweaty. It won't get easier, will it?
No, Captain, it will not.
She has no more tears to cry.
With allies at her side and her love closer than her heart's vein, she walks through the door.
Tam guessed that the Theorist would move the oracle closer, and she was right. She worries how the others will find her, but she stays focused. She has a job to do. Here, at the base of the tower, Jadzi's cell is empty, and seated outside of Professor Vess's cell is Professor Opal.
Her white dress gleams like the water on the stone walls behind her. She sits in front of the bars that guard Professor Vess's cell, a book propped on one knee, puffing on her pipe. When Tam rounds the corner, her eyebrows rise with joy. "Tamira! What a blessing to see you!"
Tam has lied before, and she's very good at it, but she still feels bad lying to Professor Opal. It's a bit like lying to an effervescent nun. "I was going to clean out Jadzi's cell. Can you help?"
Professor Opal slams her book shut with theatrical flair. "Of course!" The healer stands and produces a jangling set of keys.
She marches over to Jadzi's old cell and enters without question. As she does, Tam sidles up to the bars of the original Liliana's cell.
"I was going to work on my healing salves to cure deer flu," says Professor Opal from down the hall, "but maybe I can catch up on that after I feed the pegasi."
Yeah, she doesn't feel bad about this.
Tam tosses something simple through the bars—a package of leftover chicken.
"What was that?" Professor Opal calls.
A violet flash in Liliana's cell provides the answer. Tam listens as something rattles to life, skitters across the stone floor, and undoes the master hex.
Tam, very wisely, takes a few steps back.
An unearthly screech. The undead remains of a one-winged chicken bolt out of Liliana's cell and down the hall. Professor Opal screams, but the sound is quickly drowned out by what can only be described as an eruption of rats. Thousands of them in varying states of decay squeeze out from the stonework, pour from the mouth of the giant head, spill from the ceiling, scramble toward Jadzi's cell, and only when Opal's screeches reach their highest register does the curtain call kick in.
The weight of the rats bursts open the bars, and Liliana emerges, hands glowing violet, manic pleasure stretched across her face. She holds aloft a half-eaten wing, then moans as she tears into it.
"So sick of fruit," she says, cleaning off the bone. "Thanks for the snack, kid."
Tam blushes.
Professor Opal staggers out of Jadzi's cell, radiating iridescent light that seems to keep the rodents at bay, though they follow her as she stumbles across the floor. Her body is covered in half-healed scratches, her white dress stained an alarming red.
Liliana storms toward her double, pushes through the protective barrier, wraps her hands around Opal's throat, driving her back. The two of them vanish into one of the empty cells, and the scrabble of rats is drowned out by violent choking. The sound of it makes Tam feel ill. The silence that follows even more so.
Liliana reappears, all trace of gratitude gone, only emptiness in those violet eyes. "You're still him." She holds up a clawlike hand burning violet in the dark, and the rats surround Tam. "You have his blood. You have his marrow. Every part of you is him."
Tam looks Liliana dead in the eyes. "So what?"
Liliana stares right back. Tam watches her process something she can't infer, and after a moment, Liliana's gaze softens. "You're just a kid."
Tam scoffs. "I'm in my early twenties."
"Yeah, well, I'm in my early two hundreds. Anyone younger than a century is a kid to me." Liliana's hand stops glowing, the rats recede into the walls, and Tam releases her breath. The necromancer sighs. "All right, Beleren Junior, what's the plan?"
"The Theorist is out of control."
"You do have his genius."
Tam ignores her sarcasm. "His body needs to die, but no one can get near him. We need to stop him from a distance."
Liliana's face twitches, her expression somewhere between disgust and uncertainty. "You're asking me to kill Jace?"
Tam is resolve and iron. Her maker is gone, split into too many pieces. What remains is the man who would destroy all worlds. "I'm asking you to stop him before he can kill Jadzi and make everything worse."
Liliana chews her lip. She straightens her posture, rolls her shoulders. With a flick of her hands, something in the cell behind her shuffles into position. Tam does her very best not to startle when Professor Opal walks out, smiling.
"A zombie?"
"A lich," corrects Liliana, speaking through the mouth of Professor Opal. "Put a little extra in there for distance work."
"The overlay will start soon," Tam says. "I'm going outside to try and help from there. You're strong enough to face him. Do whatever you need to."
Both original and copy share a flash of vulnerability. "I know him," says Liliana. "I'm going to try to talk him down."
Tam watches Liliana shake this emotion off, as if removing an uncomfortable sweater, and with saccharine sarcasm, the two Lilianas snark as one.
"Time to go beat up my ex, I guess."
The Detective's shackle lies inert behind them as they walk into the next room. They enter a dark hallway, its floor lined with massive pulsating roots. The walls glisten in the scant candlelight, and the walls shine with machinery. The sight of phyresis makes Vraska's scars ache. It's too recent a memory to be a distant nightmare. Even here, though, she can feel the Detective's presence with her, a passenger remarking on the unsettling scenery as they walk past.
This one is from the time you were, he notes. The one he was most keen to be rid of. You'll understand why.
"The Detective says this one is the compleated Jace."
"What's a compleated Jace doing in a nice place like this?" Chandra smirks as she leans away from a wall with a metallic hand emerging from it. "Tell the Detective this Jace is a real piece of work."
Tell her I can hear her.
"He can hear you," Vraska says, resigned to being a temporary interpreter.
"That's fun. Detective, what's in here?"
Vraska wasn't present for this memory. At the time, she was blinding and bulldozing her way across the bloody streets of Ravnica.
Do you know what's in here? she asks him in earnest.
His response is sheepish. No. We have sequestered that part.
Healthy, Beleren. Real healthy. Vraska sighs. Her stomach squirms.
You're uncomfortable with the plan, the Detective says.
Yes, I'm uncomfortable with the plan. I don't want you dead, especially not the way I know you're going to have to do it.
She briefly shares the worst of her imagination's images of how one could terminate a body from the inside, from the mind. She's seen deaths that are close—lolling eyes and hoarse screaming at a Vraska he doesn't recognize, gasping for air, convulsing into a painful oblivion …
The Detective sends back a feeling of assurance, warmth. It's the right thing to do. It won't be painless, but it must be done. The original Multiverse needs me dead to survive.
Vraska doesn't hide how that makes her feel.
Chandra's gasp snaps her attention back to the world around them.
Ahead, in a massive room at the base of a massive tree, is Elesh Norn, gargantuan and gleaming, straddling the great roots of Realmbreaker. Nissa, compleated, suspended in front of her, an extra set of arms reaching out. And there, at Norn's side, is Jace, compleated as well.
His cables snap to look at Vraska, his head following with a slow turn, and before she can realize she is frozen in place, she hears Chandra leap toward Nissa with a war cry. From behind her, Ajani charges at Norn herself, and Vraska watches compleated Jace in terror. He grins back, cocky and accomplished, and places a hand on Norn's side.
"It is not real!" Garruk cries from the back. "Illusions! Jace is within them!"
Vraska blinks. His cry stalls Chandra's race forward, but Ajani does not slow.
He holds up his axe and swings at Norn, who blocks his blade with a flick of her hand. He braces for purchase and pushes back, tail flicking as he muscles his way closer.
"Norn!" he bellows, and just narrowly avoids the edge of her fingers as they swipe toward him again. Bits of his fur float down in the air between them.
"It is an illusion, Ajani!" yells Garruk, and he runs forward to tackle the leonin out of the way. Ajani dodges, growls, just as Garruk seizes his axe with both hands.
Vraska remembers she can move and briefly makes eye contact with the Phyrexian Jace. With all his eyes he sees her, but she knows it is false. A vision, smug and pliant, but the true Jace is somewhere else in the room.
He's hiding. With a gorgon's intuition, she scents his blood, past the others, specific and familiar, and behind her, there, a space at the back of the room.
"Detective!" she calls aloud.
He answers with effort, I see him.
And there, flickering into vision at the Detective's command, is the true compleated Jace, huddled on the ground, pulling a shining sword from his chest. His face is contorted in pain, black oil streaming from the sides of his lips and his trembling cables. His expression is one of grim determination, and when he meets Vraska's eyes, it is with a fire she has never seen in him.
"I'm coming!" he coughs, and half his oil comes up with it. He grits blackened teeth with all his fury. "I'm coming, Captain …"
Even though I know we are doomed, she hears in her head.
She knows who this is. His darkest part, the foundation of Beleren that prevented his greatest successes and weighed down his heart the most. The name of this aspect settles in her mind like a drowning animal—the Nihilist.
Vraska runs for him, grabbing his shoulders, holding a hand to his cheek. All of his cables turn and look to her at once, and even through the metal in his irises she sees his unstoppable will.
"My turn to save you," she promises, and with a brief touch of her forehead to his, his shoulders relax, and the compleated Jace vanishes.
There's a rustling in her head, a chilly feeling of metal quickly swaddled by Innistradi oilcloth.
He's safe, says the Detective. I've got him.
"Ajani, enough!" Chandra calls, but the leonin keeps scrambling out of the druid's grasp, trying desperately to reach Elesh Norn.
The Phyrexian World Tree pulses with light, and an immense boom from somewhere inside of it knocks them all to the floor. Norn rises, lifting the transformed body of Nissa with her. Vraska sees Chandra screw up her eyes, desperate not to leave, Garruk holding back Ajani with all his strength—
"We can go!" Vraska yells. "I've got him!"
Not needing a second excuse, Chandra bolts for something at the back of the room. With great effort, Garruk lifts Ajani up and drags him in the same direction. Vraska follows, and as she does, she sees what looks like a miniature mage-ring from Vryn.
A portal, the Detective says. In!
She isn't one to argue.
Leaving behind the worst day of Jace's life, she flees with two parts of him.
And through the cool breeze of the portal, she emerges into wide-open sky and the smack of summer humidity.
The sun is distilled here, and she feels piercing heat and the thick air of a jungle. Polyhedral structures float in the air, undisturbed by gravity, and the far edges of the meadow they stand in are stuffed with trees. An endless blue sky is freckled with more strange stone structures than she can count. Zendikar.
"We must follow the portals," the Detective says.
Garruk kneels, shoves his fingers into the ground, and pulls up a sample of soil, sniffing. "Eldrazi are near. More illusions of them, anyway."
Vraska knows better this time. What do we know of Eldrazi? she asks the two scientists in her brain.
Recyclers of planes, says the Detective. That's the theory.
Monsters without merit. The only one that is different is not here, says the Nihilist. Vraska is curious to hear him speak. She always found Jace's pessimism both annoying and oddly funny.
She readies her knife as she watches the others prepare themselves. Which one is different?
Emrakul, says the Detective. No, she is not here. But her beastly siblings are.
Annihilate them and cherish their suffering, my love, encourages the Nihilist.
She says nothing, but she doesn't mind the encouragement. She smiles. This part of him remains oddly funny.
Something wriggles through the trees. Garruk and Ajani both freeze, turning to the horizon.
Ajani's hackles are still raised, even with Norn behind them. His ears twitch as he glances at Vraska. "I have resumed my composure," he promises. "Forgive me for forgetting what was real. Elesh Norn claims my nightmares to this day."
She pats his arm. "Mine, too," she whispers.
"Voices," Garruk says. He hunches low and heads for the tall patch of grass nearby.
"The Singing City," Vraska realizes. "He would have hidden the exit there."
They press forward, crouched low in the tall grass, the only sound the voices in the distance and the insects chirping underneath. The heat prickles at Vraska's tendrils, and she stays low, lest the monsters see them pass.
Nissa always said this was when she stopped trusting him.
You mean you? Vraska asks the Jaces in her head.
I did not say that, says the Detective.
Nor I, says the Nihilist.
Vraska quiets her mind. She feels herself frown. Rough grass grazes her fingertips, and she walks as quietly as she can, but more sounds fill her mind.
The witch is somewhere in the tower, I will curse her as she cursed me—
—should not have let my better urges pass my control. Norn is gone. She cannot harm again—
—can't blame her, but he's worth saving. He's still a good man—
Her heart races, and Vraska wonders if they should find another path through to the city.
"Vraska, will you please can it?" Chandra hisses.
"I'm not saying anything."
Then why did you just—
—clearly you are—
—telepathic nonsense—
Everybody quiet! Vraska bellows in her own mind.
All four of them stop.
They each erupt into a cacophony of internal alarm.
This memory trap is the sensation of not being able to shut out the voices of other minds! says the Detective to all. Concentrate, quiet your thoughts. We won't only be hearing each other!
Vraska focuses on the sound of her own breath, attempts to clear her mind. A low buzz irritates at the edges, and she realizes it's Chandra actively trying not to think of anything.
They approach the ruins of an ancient-looking city, and as soon as they pass under its archway, the noise grows infinitely more chaotic.
It's the sound of a crowd humming an annoying song, a child clumsily practicing their alphabet, an actor memorizing a monologue, a woman trying to remember if she locked the door when she left, a man holding an imaginary argument, a woman remembering a sordid encounter, a person reading a book, a plethora of voices and thoughts bombarding all of their minds.
Garruk groans. Ajani hisses. The four of them try to make their way through the ruins but keep pausing, one after another, to shake their heads.
This is telepathy, Vraska says to herself—and everyone else, on accident.
Every second of every day, the Detective and the Nihilist say in unison. It is a constant effort to maintain quiet.
And there, huddled under an arch of one of the ruins, is another Jace.
His eyes are wide, hands over his ears. The ghost of a beard dusts his jawline. He's curled up against the side of a stone arch, his cloak and leathers rough with weeks of travel, and those startling eyes are focused on the walls above him. Vraska looks up and sees that they extend too high for physical walls to stand, growing stone block by stone block. She watches as the illusion thins, the blue sky piercing through. He is trying to resist the noise, but no illusion can block out the psychic assault.
This place was created to torture him.
Vraska knows this one. It's the Jace who keeps the lid on the jar. This is Jace at his loneliest, the version that found it easier to lock himself away because intimacy was too risky. The cost of a firm hand on the door handle was departures on the other side.
"You're his control, aren't you?" she says, kneeling next to him. Chandra joins at her side.
"Are we sure this isn't him from a specific time period?"
We broke by function, the Detective says. Our representation is the age at which we exemplified that quality.
"This was you when you locked everything down, were most able to shut it out," Vraska articulates. This was a difficult time for the two of them. The others fidget, no doubt sensing the discomfort in Vraska's memory.
This Jace, the Warden, glances at Vraska with uncertainty and a flash in his eyes. In a split second, the noise in their heads grows worse.
Chandra reaches out and touches his arm. "That's enough."
The Warden gasps, though they can barely hear it.
"I need you to do your job, Warden," Chandra repeats, picking up the name as it floats through their shared connection. "Lock it down."
The Warden swallows with uncertainty, and his eyes alight with the steel blue of a lockbox.
Their minds turn blissfully silent. All of them sigh in relief.
This Jace, this Warden, stands. His jaw is set, his eyes cold. All vulnerability, all hurt, all softness, is sealed far beyond their reach.
"There you are," she says with warmth. "You're not so bad when you have a job to do." Vraska wonders about the complexities of their history and is glad the others can't hear her musing.
He turns to Chandra, his oathbound friend. "What now?"
She motions to her own head and speaks quickly, as if on the edge of starting an argument. "You gonna get in here?"
"Do you have something to say to me, Chandra? I can take it."
She sighs. Visibly considers a decade of feelings at once. At last, she arrives at her message. "You're an asshole, Jace."
He nods. "Yeah," he says. "I'm working on it."
The two of them look at each other for a moment.
"So, you gonna kick your own butt and save the day? Go down as a hero? All of this is your fault. You gonna do things on your own, half-ass your way to victory again?"
The Warden shakes his head. "I think you all should take the credit. You're saving me now. I'm not special."
Chandra's face scrunches up with emotion. Vraska can't help but feel it, too. This Jace is so … humble. He has to be. He's the one constantly wrestling with his gift.
The Warden shifts uncomfortably. "I think I'm good now."
"I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend, Jace," Chandra sputters as the Warden pulls back his hood.
He closes his eyes, and just like that, he's gone.
The pyromancer shakes her head a bit. She squints. "Oh, that's weird."
Unprompted, Chandra's eyes go wide. Tears well in the corners, and she smiles broadly.
What is that about? Vraska asks the two Jaces in her own head.
He forgives her, says the Detective.
Chandra wipes away her tears. "This one tunes it all out. He's the focus, but also the blindfold. He says the other Jaces should hide from the next one."
Vraska nearly asks the Detective what part is so awful that they ought to hide, but she's interrupted.
You've got this, the Detective whispers, and she feels the two presences in her mind descend from view. She'll have to find out on her own.
Vraska thinks about what the Detective implied, that she willfully ignored his darkness. She feels deep guilt, but of course she ignored it. Don't all who love another ignore such things? If she were broken into parts, some of them would be monstrous, too.
The thought is unnerving. Her gift is part of who she is, but not the whole thing, just as Jace's gift is part of who he is. Yet no piece of him they've encountered so far is strictly his telepathy. Vraska considers this.
Zendikar's heat bears down on her neck. She feels her skin prickle in the sunshine. The cacophony has quieted, but they need to keep moving. They need to find the oracle before it's too late.
"We move," Ajani announces. "But a word before we enter the next portal, Vraska … This plan must be painful."
Her heart catches in her throat. She knows what he means. "This is the worst thing I will ever watch."
"You will not witness his passing alone," he assures her.
Vraska hates how comfortable he is with allowing Jace to annihilate himself from the inside, how the stakes are high enough that he is on board.
"Although," Ajani adds, "you are not helpless in this choice of his."
"Aren't I?"
"Vraska, Golgari Queen, is anything but helpless."
His whiskers twitch, and he continues on, leaving Vraska to infer his meaning.
They walk through thick ferns and vines, ducking into the canopy at the edge of the ruins, and when they do, they find another ringed portal waiting for them.
Vraska braces, still uncertain which memory would be so potent that the other Belerens were advised to retreat.
They pass through the portal and are brought to their knees with a collective migraine. The side of Vraska's head throbs, pulses with agony, and forces her to stop. Her mouth tastes of copper, and her vision blurs like a fogged mirror.
Vraska knows this. She's lived it through his eyes.
A rooftop.
Rain pours from the sky. It smothers the horizon in deep, turbulent gray and spills from the side of the structure. At the center of it all is a gargantuan sphinx.
Alhammarret.
He dominates the rooftop. Even lying down, he is huge, and his spread wings hang over the edges of the building.
But the sphinx is not alive, not really. It twitches and beats its wings with sickening thuds, and from its mouth it greedily sucks in air with an uneven cadence, as if it forgot the order of inhale, exhale, inhale—
A young teenager stands before it, trembling. "It was so easy," is all Vraska can make out in his frightened mumbling. "It was so easy."
Vraska falls to her knees, the pain in her head overwhelming. She sees that Ajani and Chandra have also stumbled.
But Garruk? Garruk walks forward toward the boy.
The boy is slight, his thin shoulders weighed down by guilt. Garruk understands. Killing is different when you're acquainted with the prey. He knows the gasp of a dying animal, understands the wrongness of that sound coming from the face of a man, even if it has the body of a beast. The sphinx dies thrashing, and the boy stands watching.
Garruk's head feels like it is in a vise. His vision shines and aches with a halo that follows no matter where he looks, but that is not as important.
He kneels by the boy, and the boy turns to him.
"Do you know who I am?" the boy whispers with horror. His eyes are so wide, clear glacial lakes at their center.
Garruk does not respond, not yet. He did not know this part of Beleren's past. The reality of it unnerves him; he's forgotten who he was from time to time as well. But to forget so young?
The boy sobs. "You know me! Please, help! I don't know who I am!"
"I know who you are," Garruk replies, not softening his voice, but staying as still as he can so as not to frighten the boy. "But you must stop your spell. Our friends are hurting."
Strange, Garruk realizes, how easily he calls them friends.
The boy blinks. "Our friends …"
"You have many friends. And your selflessness will save them all."
The boy pulls in close, stuffs his head against the leather of Garruk's breastplate. The intimacy is alarming, but Garruk does not move. He thinks of other youths, of twins. He thinks of how he hasn't once stopped to question if he's the best person to kneel and help this sad, empty boy.
Garruk turns to the others behind him, and his voice rumbles over the patter of rain and the sting of his own migraine. "I will protect the child."
And with a gentle blue flash, the young Jace vanishes into his mind.
I'm the Clean Slate, whispers the boy. I'm the one who knows we can always start over.
I know that as well, Garruk responds, gooseflesh rising on his arms with the peculiarity of telepathy. I have also begun anew.
As you will again. As I will again. Thank you, Garruk.
The spell lifts, his migraine vanishes, and the others start to clamber to their feet. The rain softens slightly, but another noise interrupts them—an unearthly gasp.
With a strained inhale, the sphinx rises again, an unnatural and undying memory. When it spreads its wings, it blocks the entire horizon.
The beast is not dead.
Of course. It cannot die in a nightmare.
Garruk draws his axe and lurches forward to swing but suddenly knows he needs to turn around, needs to walk toward the ledge, needs to jump off it.
Garruk doesn't understand the origin of these thoughts but feels a wrongness swimming around in his head, a wrongness that almost distracts him from the mage-ring at the sphinx's side—the way out.
He grits his teeth and runs for the portal, halts his steps and edges back toward the ledge, then ducks through the impulse and grabs Chandra. Again, his shoulders turn, facing the ledge, and with all his strength, he pushes through the compulsion. He, unmovable Ajani, and Chandra shove themselves into the mage-ring.
But it is only as they are passing through the portal that they see Vraska standing on the edge of the building, compelled by the sphinx to spread her arms wide. And as easily as one would step off the last stair, she steps over the edge.
