Chapter Text
“Really? I was just thinking about going to Ravnica!” Bob says.
Short lady shakes her head. Did he say the wrong thing? It was true that he was thinking of going to Ravnica. For all he knows that unstable Omenpath reopened before the collectors beat him up and sent him to wherever they are. Well, not wherever. Short lady just said they were in Ravnica.
She also said something about planeswalk…? Whatever that is. Oh! Is it walking between the planes? Is that what going through an Omenpath's called?
“What's the last thing you remember before coming here?” Walker asks.
Woah, is that why this handsome soldier is called Walker? Because he’s a Planes-walker? But shouldn’t all of them be called walker because they walked through planes? Does Bob count if it’s his first time? Archangels, Walker’s gaze is making him hot. Or maybe it’s just the room. He noticed he has been starting to sweat since he got here.
Short lady puts a hand on his shoulder. He remembers that Walker asked him a question.
“Oh, well… I was being chased by, uhm, collectors down fifth street. I went for an Omenpath but it kinda closed? I guess it reopened and sent me here?”
“Omenpaths don’t just reopen,” dagger lady tells the floor.
“What?”
Walker spins in place, shield high. He looks like he’s getting frustrated with Bob. Good because Bob is getting frustrated at how annoyingly charming his rudeness is.
“Omenpaths are portals to different planes of existence. They’re natural but they still take a lot of energy from leylines and rip through the fabric of reality. You get that, Bobby?” Walker explains.
Hmm… Bobby. He likes that.
“Are you even listening?!”
“Okay, enough!” short lady shuts everyone up. “We can discuss Bob later. We need to find a way out. If we can’t planeswalk away there has to be something in here that’s stopping us from doing so.”
Bob sees Walker’s jaw set oddly, as if the handsome soldier thought of something bad. He hopes he isn’t that bad thing.
“There’s only one thing in existence that can do that,” says Walker.
They all look at him waiting and short lady gestures for him to continue.
“It’s called the Immortal Sun. A powerful artifact used during the War of the Spark.”
“And what’s that?” Bob can’t help but ask. Who can blame him when these people just keep saying things that he doesn’t know about. Forgive him if he wants to be in the loop.
“It was when a mad Elder Dragon lured thousands of Planeswalkers to Ravnica to steal their sparks,” Ava answers him. Thank you.
Walker waves her off, “That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that it can be deactivated. We thought it was destroyed along with New Prahv during the Phyrexian Invasion.”
Okay, that Bob knows. He lived through it. He doesn’t know how he survived the Phyrexians but he lived through it.
“It must’ve been buried deep within the stonework.”
“Thousands of feet underground, hundreds of miles away from the Tenth?” Ava asks incredulously. Bob doesn’t know where New Prahv or the Tenth actually is, was. Whatever. But he thinks it is unlikely that something wouldn't have moved that great a distance by chance.
“Who cares how it got here? Can it be turned off?” short lady asks.
“Yes, but it’s way above my paygrade,” Walker says, disappointed with the answer himself. “And I’m pretty high up there.”
Great. They’d either die here of starvation, suffocation, or the rising heat. Or the most likely choice, these three planeswalkers—he still doesn’t know what that is—would go back to killing each other and he gets caught in the crossfire.
“Why is it so hot in here?” dagger lady asks, pulling on her collar.
Walker speaks up as he goes around inspecting the passageways, “It’s called the Immortal Sun for a reason, Ava.”
Okay, so dagger lady’s name is Ava. Good to know.
“So, who are you then?” Bob asks short lady. Might as well know the names of everyone he’s probably going to die with.
Short lady raises a single brow, assessing him. He doesn't like how scrutinizing her gaze is. She takes a moment but she says, “You can call me Yelena.” She looks like a Yelena. That’s easy to remember. It’s a pretty common name in New Capenna.
“If we can’t turn the Immortal Sun off, maybe we can find a way to open the seals,” Yelena shouts to Ava and Walker. He finds it offensive that she doesn’t include him.
A few minutes of Bob watching the three planeswalkers inspecting every suspicious crevice and every loose stone go by. He can see all of them getting frustrated as the heat starts to turn the chamber into a brick oven. Is this what yeast feel like before they bake?! Oh boy, he doesn’t want to die and become bread.
Walker punches the hard stone seal enough that there’s a small crater shaped like his fist on its surface. It startles Bob out of his bread-spiral and he looks at the angry surrender on Walker’s handsome face. This man has very strong hands.
“Easy there, Walker,” Ava says. “We don’t know what will happen if we damage the seals.”
“I know that!” Walker shouts angrily. “Not the first time I'm about to die because of that stupid artifact.”
“Just be glad you’re in your home plane both times,” Ava throws back.
“I’m sorry,” Walker apologizes. Bob feels like he’s intruding on something but he doesn’t know where else to go when there’s nowhere else to go.
Bob notices the dead body twitching on the floor. He’s heard of a death rattle but he thinks that only happens to the dying not the dead. So, he brings it to everyone’s attention, “Guys, the dead guy is twitching.”
“What do you mean she’s twitching,” Yelena asks, approaching him.
Huh, dead guy is a dead girl. He couldn't really tell earlier because of the mask and the armor.
“Like, she’s literally twitching right now.”
Then a massive cloud of black smoke burst from the dead girl. It grew in size more and more as it billows out of her. It then coalesced and surged in a massive stream, passing through Bob towards the seal with the dragon symbol, breaking and crumbling the massive stone slab. He falls to the floor as the smoke seemingly took the air from his lungs as it passed through him.
He barely got his bearings back when he felt dust and tiny debris start falling on him. And as soon as he coughs on dust, strong hands start pulling him by his shirt and then by his arm, across the floor and outside the chamber. He was frozen in fear as a large piece of the stone ceiling almost fell on him. He might not have died a piece of bread but he most certainly got close to dying a pancake.
“Thanks,” he says. Looking up at his savior, he comes face-to-face with Walker. Gruff, handsome, blonde-bearded Walker… who drops him the moment their eye contact was a second too long.
Ow.
Bob stands up and dusts himself off.
“Hey, you okay?” Yelena asks him.
That’s nice, having someone be concerned for once. Twice if he counts Walker pulling him out. “Yeah, yeah. I’m good.”
They all collect themselves for a moment before the other three start bickering again.
“We need to get out of here,” Walker says.
“No shit,” Yelena throws, not particularly biting but it makes Walker growl nonetheless.
Judging from how Walker’s jaw is set, Bob thinks he’s trying hard not to growl at the group. When no one says anything, the handsome soldier tells Yelena, “Okay, since you’re so eager to leave why don’t you try planeswalking away to see if the collapse turned the Immoral Sun off.”
“Why should I planeswalk? You planeswalk.”
“I’m already in my home plane where I need to be,” Walker smugly tells her.
“Fine,” Yelena mutters. She’s enveloped by the same white and red light from before but this time a golden barrier violently yanks her down, throwing her on the floor.
“Great!” Walker hangs his shield on his back and claps once. He walks further into the passage as he says, “Now we’ve established none of us can leave, let’s go tell the living Guildpact that the damned thing was activated.”
Bob is the first to follow behind Walker. Firstly, since Walker was a local, he presumably knows the exit. Secondly, the asshole has such a nice ass that his feet started walking just so he can keep looking at the sweet soldier's behind. Man, he really shouldn’t be lusting over a man he just met. Especially one that’s been an asshole from the start.
“If you can’t raise your standards, Bob. Raise your eyes,” Yelena whispers to him, chuckling a bit. “It’s rude to ogle people.”
He quickly stares forward but is met with Walker’s nicely pauldron-ed shoulders peeking from the sides of the shield. So, he forces himself to look at Yelena and her obnoxiously knowing face, letting Ava walk ahead of them. Hopefully ghost-dagger lady heard nothing.
“I was not ogling Walker!” he whispers back.
“I didn’t say who.” She chortles and
They walked quite a while; turning sharp corners and up several flights of stairs before they were met with more hallways and down and up and turn and up, up, up, up again. Maybe Walker isn’t called Walker because he was a planeswalker. Maybe he’s called that because he likes to walk and walk and walk with no end.
He's bored. And if he can’t stare at the gorgeous specimen that is Walker without getting teased by this short lady he just met, he’ll just have to speak his mind. Not against Yelena though; she might actually kick his nuts.
“What’s a planeswalker?”
The other three stop to look at him. Ava and Walker turn their gaze on Yelena before walking along, leaving her to answer him.
“So…” the short lady sounds out as they both go back to walking. “You know how Omenpaths started appearing and people are now able to walk freely between planes?”
He nods.
“Well, before the Invasion you can’t. Normally. The point is there are people who can do that without the Omenpaths even from before. They–We are called planeswalkers.”
“Congratulations, Bobby!” Walker says without looking back. “You’re now part of an exclusive group of traumatized mages.”
“Thank you, Walker. Wait, what was the last part?” He really should start listening to Walker’s words beyond his name.
“Don’t listen to him, Bob,” Ava says. Well, he already didn’t but she’s not going to tell her that.
Yelena continues, “What this asshole meant to say was there’s a one in a million chance a thing with a soul is born with a bit of aether from the Blind Eternities…”
Okay, Bob’ll take a mental note to ask what the Blind Eternities is later. Sounds very poetic.
“We call that a ‘spark’. So now you take a million people with a spark. Only one of them gets to ignite that spark and become a planeswalker. And from what I know, it’s usually at the cost of severe physical or emotional trauma.”
Bob nods. He guesses battle-hardened mercenaries and soldiers like these three with him have probably endured a lot of traumatic experiences in their line of work. But he’s a bit confused. Being chased down by collectors is like every other weekend to him—practically routine at this point. And he’s definitely been hit with worse things than a gilded crowbar. He wonders what made today different.
“You’re lucky,” Ava pipes up. “I first planeswalked when a fissure to the afterlife tore through the skies of my home plane. I was ten, sent me right to a burning house in Innistrad, surrounded by flaming zombies.”
Yelena actually chortles beside him, “Ah, you don’t want to play this sob first planeswalk game. I win. Three year old prisoner of war turned child soldier here.”
“Well, you were just kids—”
“Oh, that’s? A good thing now?” Yelena cuts Walker off.
The handsome but infuriatingly insensitive soldier looks back at them, “It's nice to think you didn’t know any better.”
“Thanks. I feel so much better now,” Yelena says in a such a deadpan manner that Bob almost laughs.
He thinks Walker was wrong with that. No kid should suffer through burning zombies and war. He doesn’t remember his own childhood but he remembers feeling abused on isolated a lot when he was young. Maybe he’s planeswalked before and he just didn’t know it. Pretty unlikely, though, given that the streets of New Capenna is all he’s ever known.
They reach what’s presumably the exit. Bob can see the light at the end of the tunnel and feel the fresh air replacing the dank stale air from deep underground. Walker stops and they all squint at what’s at the exit. Okay, so the light wasn’t daylight or anything. There was a small army flashing a giant light bulb towards the entrance. It’s not really a light bulb, Bob just doesn’t know what it’s called.
He can see Walker’s and Ava’s eyes widen when they see the small army. The two immediately hide in a corner and he and Yelena follow suit.
“Why, what’s wrong?” Yelena asks.
“Those are Azorius enforcers out there,” Ava says. Yelena throws her look that says that doesn’t explain anything. Which Bob agrees.
Walker starts pacing, “Police force, basically. They have precogs which means they probably already know what went down.”
“I thought you were high in the food chain here?” Yelena questions Walker.
“Yes. In a different Guild. Planeswalking directly into this district is illegal and must’ve triggered one of their alarms.”
Bob wasn’t really listening but when he looks up Walker is staring daggers at him. It slowly sinks in that he’s the one who planeswalked to the district. “I’m sorry. I always make things worse.”
“If the Immortal Sun is down here, the Firemind needs to know right away. It’s the first time it’s activated since the War of the Spark and we don’t know how it’s going to affect the Omenpaths. Getting arrested by these yahoos would stop us from doing that,” Walker explains. Bob doesn’t understand much of anything but thinks it’s good reasoning to get out of there. That and they almost died down here. “Here’s what we’re going to do…”
“So, you’re the boss now?” Ava challenges.
“Okay, let’s see. I’m a Boros Legion captain, I’ve saved countless lives in dozens of planes, I practically defended the fifth district singlehandedly during the Phyrexian Invasion. Hmm, what else? Uh… Oh! Strixhaven Mage Tower champs back to back to back. Go, Lorehold!”
Walker’s not just handsome, he’s pretty impressive. Again, Bob doesn’t know what any of those things he said are but they sound impressive.
“Oh, wow,” Yelena says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “When I was five I was in a kids-only Kolaghan hunting party. My dad liked to call us little thunderbolts because we screamed a lot. We took down zero game and one time this girl Min’di did a poo on top of her pony. Anyone else got any pointless childhood stories to tell?”
She said that all in one breath—Bob's impressed. But she looked at him and Ava expecting them to say something. Or maybe not but since they’re all sharing, might as well. Hmm… he’s been thinking “might as well” a lot for the past thirty minutes.
“Grew up in a wraith-infested city,” Ava shares.
“Opium-addicted, sign-twirling chicken,” he adds his own pointless story. Not exactly childhood but pointless still.
Bob also thinks him being there is pointless. Maybe he can tell the enforcers the other three are innocent if he doesn't resist arrest. After all, one of the things his boss taught him is that there’s always a fall guy. “Maybe I'll just surrender,” he shares.
“Great, every man for himself.” Not great. Bob doesn’t like the way Walker sounded disappointed in him.