Click.
The background hum of the alarm cantrip he'd set the night before. Scratch that. Earlier that morning. This was bad news. Jace Beleren was not ready to wake up.
Ouch.
The light streaming through his windows made his eyes sting. Real pain, fake light. The windows themselves could look out onto any vista he'd ever seen, in real-time if he was on that plane. Mostly, they looked at Ravnica. Work before pleasure.
Coffee.
That was step number one, as soon as he could get ambulatory. Ral had given him some a few days ago. The other planeswalker somehow figured out how to drop it off on his doorstep, which was technically impossible but that was an Izzet guildmage for you. Attached was a note:
Jace,
This coffee is experimental and no one here wants it anyway. I shouldn't really have it so I'm leaving it with you. I trust you'll be able to make use of it, seeing as how you go through almost a pound a day according to Lavinia. It's not a gift, I'm just getting rid of it.
-Ral.
P.S. Lavinia happened to mention how much coffee you drink while we were discussing official guild matters. I didn't ask or anything.
Jace really didn't need to be a telepath to decipher the note. He'd cross that bridge when it stopped giving him butterflies. Until then, he'd enjoy the coffee. Hopefully. Sleepily, he prepared a cup and put the kettle on.
Fifteen minutes later, Jace was desperately racking his brains to see if he knew any spells that would fix his eyelids, which seemed to be glued to the outer rims of his eyes. He hadn't blinked since his first sip, and was cursing himself for ever taking a second. The third probably hadn't helped either. Taking a few deep breaths, he began to cycle through some of the meditation techniques Gideon had taught him. They should work in this situation. Gideon said he used them to prepare for battle, but could adapt them to help Jace deal with his panic attacks.
Jace didn't like using his telepathy on friends or even neutral parties, but even a slight brush with Gideon's mind had told him he'd adapted the techniques long before he met Jace. That was alright. Gideon thought everyone relied on him, and in a way he was right. It would crush him if he thought Jace couldn't do that. Besides, Jace knew Gideon was strong enough in a lot of ways to deal with his own problems. Not that it would hurt him to ask for help every once in awhile.
His coffee finished and an invigorating buzz coursing through his body, Jace grabbed his cloak - warmer now that it was autumn on Ravnica. Sometimes the architecture of New Prahv, with its elegant arches and high fluted towers, could catch hold of a stray breeze and turn the streets into a wind tunnel. So, he'd had an enchantment commissioned that kept out the worst of the chill. He'd been loathe to let the thing out of his sight for so long, but after a single walk that ended in a runny nose Lavinia had insisted. He tried to protest, arguing that he'd survived for years on the streets of Ravnica in all sorts of weather(a fact that served only to raise Lavinia's eyebrow to heights he'd previously thought unreachable) but she was the best lawmage the Azorius had to offer for a reason, and so the cloak was sent off.
Imagine their surprise(and no small amount of horror on Jace's part) when they learned the courier transporting it had been mugged, and while both he and his guards unharmed, the parcel was nowhere to be found.
It'd turned up a few days later hanging off a statue of Azor I, with a small note written by and as-yet unknown party who claimed to have made the "necessary adjustments". An intense once-, twice-, and thrice-over by Lavinia revealed only a small x on the inside scrawled in what appeared to be blood. Lavinia insisted it was a tracking device. Jace just smiled. Who knew the Rakdos would know a thing or two about comfort, or that they would be so eager to butter him up? Apparently being the Living Guildpact had more perks than he'd thought.
Setting out the door, Jace let his mind wander and his feet follow an automatic and familiar path. He'd been traveling it for weeks by now, once every few days, but it seemed as though he never got any closer to his destination. All worthwhile things took time, he supposed. He smiled again, wondering what Chandra would think of that. She'd saved his life - all of their lives - on Zendikar, and in the short time after she'd really grown on him. She and Nissa were hopping around the multiverse together trying to hunt down the Eldrazi, and Gideon was drumming up support for the Gatewatch. He'd been avoiding Ravnica, despite the unusually high population density of planeswalkers. Domri, they'd agreed, was too young, and Ral currently had no interest in leaving Ravnica. Vraska - well, while her quarrel with the Azorius was coming to a fairly peaceful resolution and her vendetta against Jace was no more, she wasn't really a team player. Besides, she was already doing Jace a personal favor. As for Liliana, Jace hadn't seen her since their dinner together. He was fine with that, though he really should check in on that Veil situation. It had seemed serious. One step at a time, however. He shivered and put his hood up. Greatest mindmage in a dozen worlds and he still forgot to keep his head warm. Huh.
He decided to stop by a food vendor he'd never tried before for breakfast. He was getting better at eating it consistently, and this cart looked and smelled delicious. He'd never seen it before, but that wasn't unusual - many markets changed from day to day, and the jewelry cart of yesterday may well be shifted down a few feet or gone entirely to another street come tomorrow. That was the thing he liked most about Ravnica - it was never the same city twice, an experience you couldn't get anywhere else. Tossing out a few zinos for the warm bread infused with honey and spice, he continued on his path. Mmmm. This, he decided, was a compelling reason to remember to eat.
The streets were about as quiet as Ravnica ever got. Even this early in the morning, with the sun still coming up in this portion of the city, the hustle and bustle of everyday life went on. And why not? It truly was the city-plane that never slept. Still, there were few enough people to make him feel at ease. The Guildpact was a distant figure for many but still a celebrity and he'd prefer if his comings and goings weren't kept track of by anyone but him and his contact. As a safeguard, he'd woven a subtle aura that redirected the minds of anyone who noted his presence. It even helped them, replacing thoughts of him with anything else important they might have forgotten. He was proud of it, but he wasn't awake this early to test it out. He hurried on.
A few blocks later, he arrived at his destination: an abandoned building, rare in this section of the city and assuredly housing a few waifs despite the runes of condemnation placed on the entrances. In reality, it wasn't in any danger of falling down, but Jace liked the space. A squat tower around a central pavilion, the building's circular shape gave him comfort for reasons he couldn't really explain. New Prahv was full of rings and circles, courtyards that spiraled out to the edge of the neighborhood. Perhaps that's why he'd been drawn to it.
Brushing past the shimmering, wisp-like runes warning of immediate danger, turn back and do not leave children or goblins unattended near the site, he walked through the marble archway, down the straight, wide hallway and up the steps of the raised center courtyard. He reached the center and closed his eyes. He waited.
"Hello, Guildpact. So good to see you."
"Good to see you too. Well, not see, but -"
"I know what you mean," said Vraska. Are you ready to begin?"
"Yes," he said. "I'm ready."
"Glad to hear it. We'll start from the beginning, shall we? Make yourself comfortable, Guildpact."
He sighed. "You know, you can just call me Jace."
She gave a dry, raspy chuckle that was chillingly devoid of humor. "When my the Azorius see fit to give me justice, then I shall call you Jace. In the meantime, you are the Living Guildpact to me."
Jace said nothing, opting instead to slowly open his eyes so he could lie down in the center of the pavilion and look up at the dome covering the top of the tower. From where his head sat, the immense circle filled his entire vision. He closed his eyes again and slowly let himself relax. Vraska began to speak again, soft as a snake sliding over damp grass.
"The Gruul see the past as a roaring behemoth, a god to be brought back to the present day so it can remind fools and guild leaders alike of its importance. The Gruul are wrong."
Jace's past didn't scare him anymore. He had achieved too much, faced too many obstacles, and seen the strength of both himself and too many staunch allies to fear what lay hidden from him, hidden inside him. He wanted to embrace it, he wanted to know.
"The Selesnya see the past a frozen drop of amber, a precious gem that can be cooed over and stroked so that the anxious and fearful can find relief. The Selesnya are wrong."
Jace had always treated knowledge as a treasure and his telepathy as a gift that would grant him more intangible riches. Recently, he had begun to view it as a part of him, indistinguishable and undeniable. He did not pursue his past any more. He let it rise up to meet him. He was ready.
"The Simic see the past as a tool, a powerful additive in their solution that will unlock the future and push the world into a glorious perfection. The Simic are wrong."
The past wouldn't change who he was. He had shaped the Jace Beleren who existed today, and no discovery would change the choices he could remember and the decisions he had made for himself. His future didn't rely on his past. He was taking his time.
"The Golgari live in the sewers. We are surrounded by trash and refuse and waste and rot and we cannot ignore it. We are a part of it and it is a part of us. To claim otherwise is a lie. We see the past. It is with us every day. The dead are not a part of the past. They are with us in body and spirit. The past lives on, a part of our daily lives, and that is a truth only the Golgari see. I never ran from my past. I built my life around bringing that past back to where it belongs - the present."
The past was not terrifying, exciting, a prize to be won - it was a part of him. It was his in a way nothing had ever been his more. He would get it back, return it to its proper place in his mind. It was time for Jace Beleren to be complete again.
"That past hurts, Jace Beleren. It hurts constantly, though it has faded since the days of no restitution. Your past hurts you. It hurts you so badly that something has forced you to forget it entirely. You must push against that something to retrieve who you are, even if that something is you. You will never be complete otherwise."
Jace's past was a total mystery to him. He didn't know if it would hurt or help, but he had to try. He had to get back so many lost years.
"The first rite of passage a Golgari rot farmer experiences is the creation of their stilts. These stilts help them navigate the sewer system with little fear of drowning. After a journey through the undercity, the stilts are covered in slime and debris. But this is not the same as being a mess. History has layers, and so too does even the foulest pool of muck. Some Golgari can tell where another has traveled just from observing the most recent stains on their stilts. To retrieve your missing past, you must push through the top layers into the ones you have cut yourself off from. It is your time, Living Guildpact. Take it."
Jace pressed against the stone floor with his body, refusing to do what had always come naturally to him when he needed an answer: focus. For the first time in his life, focusing got him nowhere. What Vraska expected him to do was something very different. She explained it, disgustingly enough, as floating in a rot pool. He needed to let go completely, let his consciousness diffuse and find the sinkhole of his past. It wasn't easy - Jace's mind wasn't just his own, and there was so much seemingly useless information he'd stored there that it felt like he could get lost in it all. There were also people there - people he knew, ones who he knew he should check in on. People he'd known. Those ones hurt to run into.
Drawing once more on Gideon's exercises(and a little of the buzz from Ral's coffee), he tried again to let himself go. He scowled. Nissa would be so good at this - the way she slipped effortlessly between her soul and Zendikar's made it look so easy. It was just like the way she'd known about the leylines and been able to manipulate them.
The leylines! Maybe that was the solution! If his mind was a map, then it had to have some way to keep things connected, a paper trail of memories. And because it was his mind, he had only to imagine it and it was so. Eagerly, he raced after the glowing trail that led through the streets of his mind - but very quickly he was lost again. He refocused, reoriented, and then - no! He couldn't focus. He had to spread out.
In his mind's eye, he saw thousands of Jace Belerens running around, searching for his way back. They each followed a different set of leylines, tracing back and forth across his mind until even he couldn't tell where they'd started. The began to close in, and soon they were sprinting towards their goal, all of them converging on - nothing. Each one stood in front of a vast, blank wall. The trail ended there.
Or did it? Jace pushed further into his memory, and the Jaces of his mind pushed against the wall. It was a strange battle - not one of straining or resisting, but one of pure unrestrained will allowed to flow as it pleased. Slowly, Jace walked through the wall. Images flickered past him - Emmara holding out her hand as he stood on her doorstep, the first words he'd heard on Ravnica, the looks of passersby as he appeared out of thin air, the rush and pull and chaotic wind that was his first trip through the Blind Eternities. He was so close now, so close he could almost feel it, taste the air of his home plane, hear his parent's voices, so close to finding out who he was and what had made him him. He could practically feel -
-feel the rush of the raw mana as it flowed through the ring, as it passed through Jace's home on its way to wreak raw havoc on some unsuspecting army or another who cared which side as long as when they occupied it they treated the workers well enough one side was as good as another so why bother choosing when the rush the rush of the mana was the same work was the same food was the same right here in Silmot's Crossing every day in fact we'd be perfectly fine if not for that boy the one who can hear what you don't say and never seems to listen to what you do say yes that one that one Silmot's Crossing would be normal but for him is there anyone like him anyone else at all anywhere on Vryn I don't think so -
Vryn.
Jace's eyes snapped open. The rim of the dome above him blazed with blue light and it seared itself into his brain.
Vryn.
It wasn't a rim, it was a ring, and ring of immense size, like the ones that had been everywhere where he came from, everywhere on his home, overrunning his home plane of -
"Vryn."
"What was that, Guildpact?"
Jace sat up. "Vryn. That's where I was from, where I am from. That's my home plane. I know now." He teared up. "I know now."
A pause.
"Also, did you call me Jace?"
Vraska ignored his latter comment, but seemed surprised by his revelation. "Am I to assume, then, that you no longer have need of my services?"
"Yes, of course. You're free to go. Thank you so much - really, you don't know how much it means."
Vraska smiled a smile that Jace could feel but not see. "Oh, I think I do, Living Guildpact. Everyone deserves a home. Even bureaucrats."
Jace smiled more than he'd ever smiled in his life, the grin threatening to split his face. He had a name, and an image. He stood and turned to find Vraska already gone. He wanted to race home and begin preparations to leave immediately, but he forced himself to walk at a measured pace. He still had an illusion of dignity to maintain as the Living Guildpact, one that he couldn't simply cast. Besides, he didn't need to rush. For the first time in his life, Jace Beleren was finally taking his time.