Gatecrash

ARMIES IN THE STREETS

Jace heard what he thought at first was a rumble of distant thunder, but it was too rhythmic and too deep to be thunder. It was the sound of a distant chant, two syllables repeated like drums.

“Berrr-rumm. Berrr-rumm.” The chant sounded like the voices of a vast lynch mob, their shouts merging into a cadenced thump, repeated over and over, layered over the sounds of marching feet. There was something oddly familiar in the chant that made a cold twinge in Jace’s subconscious, but he couldn’t place it.

Jace tried to focus on searching the ogre’s minds. But the sound was getting closer. “Berrr-rumm, Berrr-rumm,” they chanted.

The Gruul war party heard it too. “Someone’s coming,” said Thar.

“A lot of someones,” said Jace.

“War chant,” remarked Ruric, still holding a hand over his head. “Not Gruul.”

At that moment Jace felt a promising echo from Ruric’s mind, a hollow proto-thought that didn’t quite take shape, but that had the contours of what Jace was seeking. It was a wisp of a memory that Jace had passed over at first, because the ogre himself had assimilated it into his own thoughts. But Jace sensed that the cellar of the ogre’s mind echoed with a purpose that was not his own, a subconscious mission that originated with one memory.

The memory was of tearing down the sanctum where Jace had done his research. The ogre had wrecked the entire building, and Jace’s research with it, at the same time that Jace was busy destroying his own memories of it.

It was not enough to go on. Ruric Thar was an ogre of the Gruul Clans—he was not known for his attention to detail, or for his proclivity to stop and study that which he was about to pulverize. Only thin strands of details remained—a glance at a scribbled diagram, or a flash of a sheet of notes, before the memory of setting them aflame and collapsing the building on them. Not enough to get a coherent picture of the research.

“Berrr-rumm. Berrr-rumm.” The voices were getting louder. Whoever it was would round the corner in minutes.

“Time to go,” said one of the Gruul warriors, and they readied their gear to leave.

Ruric Thar got to his feet. “You done?” asked Thar, looking down the street toward the sound.

“Wait a moment,” said Jace. “Almost.”

The detail of the sanctum was lacelike, riddled with holes, but he was only considering one of the ogre’s minds. Jace quickly hastened his inner eye over to Thar’s memories, now looking for similar traces of the sanctum.

He found more. A snippet of a code that Jace and Kavin had deciphered—an old Azorius script. A path through a series of gates—guildgates, the ancient territory markers set up in the guilds’ distant past. He even detected a memory of when Jace first hired the ogre, and when he used mind magic to communicate with him—clues from Jace’s own speech pointed to the need for secrecy, the importance of the information stored in the sanctum, and the urgency of the need for thorough destruction. Jace’s mind assembled the scraps of memory from the ogre’s two brains and lashed them together with leaps of deduction. He saw it now. It was enough. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

“Rakdos!” cried the Gruul war party.

Jace turned. He saw a vast mob of Rakdos-guild rioters, jabbing at the sky with their spiked spears and jagged swords, led by the blood-witch Exava. And at that moment he realized what the crowd was chanting.

It wasn’t “Berrr-rumm.” They were chanting “Berrim,” the alias Jace had given in the Rough Crowd. They were here for him.

“Run,” said Thar. “We’ll slow them down.”

“By breaking some legs,” added Ruric.

“You’ll be overrun in seconds,” said Jace.

“Just go,” said Ruric “We owe the Rakdos a lesson.”

“I’m not just going to leave you—” Jace began, until he was interrupted by Thar grabbing him around the throat with his one meaty hand, and drawing him up to look him in the eyes.

“You learned nothing about the ogre mind?” asked Thar. “We say it? It’s done.”

Ruric only grinned, his tusks gleaming.

The ogre dropped Jace back onto his feet, and the ogre’s axe-arm rose to a battle-ready position, still edged with his own blood. The Gruul warriors gathered around Ruric Thar’s flanks, weapons raised. They roared in defiance, outnumbered dozens to one, as the Rakdos crashed into them.

Jace wiped his bloodied mouth and gathered a tidal wave of mana.

Selesnya troops poured into the streets, emptying the nature temples, wildlife preserves, and other green spaces controlled by the Conclave. The centaurs’ hooves clattered on the cobblestones and the wolf-riders bounded over stone bridges. Human and elf infantry flooded through the arteries of the district, streaming past intersections and flowing around buildings. Griffins and their riders swooped down out of a blanket of low clouds, strafing past the spires.

Emmara struggled to maintain concentration. She rode on the shoulder of a massive creature made of a snarl of marble, wood, and vines, her hand resting on its great head. Two more of the nature behemoths strode ahead of her, swinging their limbs in slow motion, indenting the streets with their footfalls as the other Selesnya troops ran between their legs. She had never controlled this many greater elementals this way. Tendons in her neck were taut. In her vision, the streets before her were overlaid with a constant flow of mana channeling through her and into the three elementals.

Below her, Captain Calomir led the Selesnya army. He rode his white war rhino, driving the Selesnya ranks forward, guiding them through the streets toward the Rakdos horde. Emmara could hear him shouting orders, but she barely made them out over her concentration.

Trostani traveled with them. The three dryads had merged their bodies with one of Emmara’s elementals, over Emmara’s objections, and the great nature beast was carrying them with it into the fray. She could see the three dryads gracefully poised at the top of the elemental’s shoulders, replacing its head, looking down at the troops on the streets below. In all her years Emmara had never seen a Selesnya guild leader go to war. She was the cause of all this. She was the center of this conflict.

This is what it feels like when an entire guild makes a mistake, she thought. This is the flaw of the Conclave, the inability to hear the truth of one voice over the din of all.

The Selesnya army pooled at the entrance of a bridge that spanned a canal. The bridge wasn’t the most direct route to Rakdos territory, but it would take them clear of any other guilds.

But Emmara saw Calomir pulling the reins of his rhino toward another route, up a short flight of steps onto a wide plaza punctuated by a line of stern archways. Above the entrance to the plaza was a sunburst symbol marked with a mighty clenched fist: the sign of the Boros guild. Throughout the plaza, Boros legionnaires stood in plate mail, their backs as straight as the pillars. Sentinels patrolled the ramparts, watching what the Selesnya army would do.

“The bridge, Calomir,” called Emmara. “We must take the bridge.”

“Not the bridge!” Calomir shouted, more to the assembled army than to her. “We travel straight through this plaza, straight to the heart of the Rakdos.”

“Calomir, no!” Emmara yelled.

But the Selesnya army swirled past her to follow Calomir. When the front feet of Calomir’s white rhino stepped across the threshold onto Boros land, trumpeters up on the ramparts blared on their instruments, and the soldiers in the plaza quit their posts and assembled into formation. Legionnaires marched forward, bristling with halberds and swords, backed by archers and pyromancers.

“Conclave, retreat!” yelled Emmara. “We must not involve the Boros as well!”

She saw Calomir glance back over his shoulder at her. If she wasn’t mistaken, he had a slight grin on his face. He kicked his beast and proceeded into the Boros plaza.

Boros soldiers collapsed on the Selesnya front lines. Archers loosed their arrows, and they sailed over Emmara’s head and rained down on the rear ranks. She could hear the screams of those behind her who fell under the assault.

A few of the missiles lodged in the foliage bodies of her elementals. Emmara commanded her minions to spread their great limbs and chests out, to deflect or catch the missiles as best they could. Arrows punched into the bramble-like elementals, most of them simply adding to the wood-beasts’ bulk. One arrow sank deep into the leg of the elemental on which Trostani rode, and exploded with a boom of magical fire. Smoke trailed out of the creature’s limb, and it stumbled.

“Trostani!” Emmara called. “We must turn back!”

“This is our destiny,” said Trostani, all three of the dryads pointing forward into Boros territory, for all the army to see. “The path to harmony is never easy. Lead us, Calomir! Lead the way!”

The Selesnya cavalry crashed into the Boros legionnaires, rending flesh on both sides. Halberdiers pierced centaurs’ flanks. Armored elves slashed through archer battalions. War-priests called down columns of searing light on wolf-riders and woodshapers.

“Senseless,” Emmara said under her breath.

She commanded her elementals to stop, and they came to a slow halt at the periphery of the Boros plaza, even as more Selesnya troops poured past her into the fray. The elementals began to turn their great forms away from the battle, but then they stopped in mid-turn. Emmara willed them to quit the battle once more.

They hesitated, shuddering like oak trees in a strong gale. Then, with a moan of their twisting trunks laden with masonry, the elementals stepped back toward the Boros plaza.

“No,” said Emmara. “No! Stop!”

She was still channeling mana into them, but her control was unraveling. They no longer responded to her commands. She was riding with nature-giants that apparently had plans of their own.

She looked to Trostani. She saw the three dryads undulating, their arms interlacing in a complicated spell. Emmara recognized part of the ritual as Trostani’s signature magic, a spell that replenished the warring Selesnya troops below with a constant stream of living energy; this is what kept every Selesnya commune in the Tenth District relatively protected from harm, and it was powerful magic to cast over an army. But the dryads had merged their signature magic with another spell, one with which Emmara was personally familiar. It was the elemental magic they had taught to Emmara.

That was why the elementals no longer obeyed her. Trostani had taken over command of the elementals, and was forcing them into the thick of the battle. Trostani’s power was far greater than hers, and she couldn’t wrest the creatures away again.

With the power of the great elementals behind them, the Selesnya army plowed ahead, ripping through the Boros defenses. Emmara had to duck as the topiary beast on which she rode passed through a stone archway. The arch wasn’t quite tall enough to accommodate the elemental, and the curved structure scraped a mane of brambles from the elemental’s head, sending a spray of burrs and woody vines at Emmara and nearly knocking her off its shoulder. Trostani continued driving the elementals across the square and through a main thoroughfare, with the Selesnya army massing around them.

Emmara scanned the battle, looking for Calomir, though she didn’t know whether she was looking for the comfort of his face, or looking for someone to blame. She spied his white rhino, and saw it charging ahead after having dispatched a pair of Boros legionnaires—but Calomir was no longer in its saddle. She looked over the bodies of fallen Boros and Selesnya warriors as the army passed through the Boros zone, and more than once she thought she saw him among the dead. But he was gone.

The Selesnya army cut through Boros territory and into a run-down industrial district that billowed with hellish smoke—a region controlled by the Rakdos.

“Onward, soldiers of Selesnya!” cried Trostani, spurring forward the great elementals with her magic. Hooves and boots and claws marched into the Rakdos zone, and wings swooped into the thick smoke above. “There, ahead, is our target!”

Emmara looked into the haze ahead, and saw a private club building marked with the demonic symbol of the Rakdos and the name “The Rough Crowd.”

“Woodshapers! Elementals! Cavalry!” Trostani called. “Shake it to the foundation!”

As the Selesnya army neared, Rakdos warriors began pouring out of the club as if it were a barracks. Emmara balled her fists.

Jace had already fooled the Rakdos with minor illusions. Parlor tricks wouldn’t sway them again. But there was no way he was going to beat an army of demon-worshiping sadists with individual psychic attacks. It was time to unleash major magic.

Ruric Thar and his band of Gruul brutes were already slicing into the Rakdos, and the war party’s savagery was shocking. Bodies of broken cultists went flying as the Gruul slammed into the horde, swinging great blows of blunt might. But the Rakdos horde kept coming, and they surrounded the Gruul in moments, tearing at them with jagged blades and spiked whips.

“Look, my pets!” came a crazed female voice. In the middle of the rampaging Rakdos horde, the blood-witch Exava stood atop a war tower, carried aloft by Rakdos minions. She had spied Jace, and pointed him out. “It’s I-Go-By-Berrim!”

Jace made a show of conjuring a spell. His cloak whipped dramatically, and dark mystical smoke curled off his body as he intoned eldritch syllables. His eyes went black as coal, and he raised his crooked fingers from the ground to the sky, as if dragging up a great weight. The ground split, and great chunks of the street fell away into the hellish light below. Sulfurous fumes emanated from the crack, and a demonic bellow resounded.

“Ancient lord, I call you!” Jace screamed, and obsidian fire blazed from his hands into the sky.

To the amazement of the horde, a demonic monstrosity the size of a building climbed out of the fissure in the pavement. It had a great burning pitchfork and a regal rack of horns, and it breathed fire from its nostrils.

“Lord Rakdos, guide us!” Jace screamed. “Lead us! We do your will!”

The mighty demon stepped out of the fissure and toward the horde, back in the direction they had come: Rakdos guild territory. The Rakdos cultists roared with praise and delight, clearing out of the demon lord’s way, mesmerized by the street-shaking steps and its fiery weapon. The demon parted the horde, and the horde began to follow it in dark adoration.

“That is not Rakdos, you freaks!” called Exava, and from across the battle she shot Jace a chilling look.

Jace knew he was getting some of the details wrong. The massive illusion he was conjuring was a figment drawn from descriptions of the Rakdos leader, influenced by snippets of memories taken from Exava herself. He had never seen the demon guildmaster Rakdos in person—but he wagered that most of the Cult of Rakdos hadn’t, either. As he wove the illusion, he let other illusions of dark mystical energy curl around him for added effect. He had no power to summon demons nor mastery over diabolic magic; he was depending on the general ignorance of the Rakdos rank and file on that score as well.

Exava had seen through the trick, but she was having a hard time overcoming the awe it inspired in her horde. Jace could see her screaming at them, trying to shake their belief in the demonic delusion. But the only authority they respected over Exava was that of the eponymous Rakdos, and they followed it blindly.

The witch tried to lash out at Jace instead. She blasted out a series of pain spells, but he was ready for that tactic, and he countered and unraveled her spells before they could break his concentration. Jace ran forward into the crowd, crowing like an insane dark mage, following his towering illusion back toward the Rakdos-controlled part of the district. Once the Rakdos horde was dispersed in their own territory, perhaps he could face and defeat Exava one-on-one.

Ruric Thar and the other Gruul warriors could only nod in confused respect as he ran past.