A/N: This is not the longest piece of fiction I have written, but it is the longest piece of fanfiction I have ever produced, so please be gentle. It came about after I read Project Lightning Bug and decided I needed a more serious piece of vaguely canon-compliant Zeleren to complement Odds/Ends. In the end, it's probably not entirely canon-compliant anymore (thanks to BFZ), but if you want to squint, it's not so very far away from the realms of possibility. Please R&R and enjoy!

Chapter One

The golden light of the Ravnica's late afternoon sun shone into the office of the Living Guildpact. Although it illuminated a stack of papers about three feet high, it fell short of reaching the Guildpact himself. Jace sighed, rubbing his hand over his eyes with tiredness. Just one more meeting, he reminded himself, and then he could go home and sleep. He ran his finger down the schedule, neatly penned in Lavinia's inimicable handwriting, and just had time to see the letter "R" followed by the letter "Z" when there was an irritable knock on the door.

Jace opened his mouth to say "come in," but before he could get a word out, Ral Zarek slammed the door open and stalked into the office. "Guildpact," he said frostily. So he wasn't 'Jace' today, Jace noticed. He also noticed the hair very gently going up on the back of his neck. Ral was definitely not in a good mood.

"How can I help you, Guildmage Zarek?" he asked.

Ral headed over to the window and stared moodily out. "I have a request," he said.

"I thought you might," Jace responded mildly. "That is why most people ask to meet with me."

"Some idiot in Orzhova didn't fill our last order correctly, and I—and many of the other researchers at Nivix—are desperately short of equipment."

"Hm," said Jace. "Are you here to file a claim against the Orzhov for breach of contract?" Because if so, you didn't have to bother coming all the way to me.

"I was hoping you might be able to expedite the process," Ral said, with a sideways glance at Jace.

"You want me to order the Orzhov to get you—whatever you need?"

"Well, they're the ones who screwed it up," Ral pointed out petulantly.

Jace rummaged through the notes Lavinia had attached to the summary of this meeting. "According to them, your forms were missing at least three signatures," he said. "I'm not sure there's much I can do."

"I'm not the one who was supposed to sign them," Ral said testily. "I can't help it if Bori Andon is a complete incompetent."

"You are technically listed as the primary contact."

"Well, they didn't contact me to ask about any signatures!"

"They say they did."

"I say they didn't." Ral turned back to Jace. "You're the mediator. So mediate. I was never contacted."

Jace could feel a headache niggling at his temples. "Ral, I am not a miracle-worker. You didn't ask for mediation. You just asked to see me. Privately."

"I thought you might be able to get me my equipment. Given that I had to sacrifice a lot of it on Project Lightning Bug."

"You mean to save your own skin?" Jace asked sweetly.

"Yours too."

"Ral, I can't just—"

"I can't do my experiments, Jace! My brain is trying to claw its way out of my head!" Ral's voice was getting louder, and sparks were beginning to leap from his gauntlet and drop to the floor beneath him.

"I would like to help, I really would, but—" A soft beeping noise interrupted Jace before he could finish his sentence. "What's that?"

"Experimental alarm," Ral said, in a puzzled voice. "It's supposed to detect equipment malfunctions in the lab, but there shouldn't be anything around here for it to detect."

Plucking a small, glowing orb off his belt, he moved around the desk. Jace instinctively began skimming the minds around him to see if something was wrong. He veered away from the tangled knot of equations and electricity that was Ral, and caught the Azorius guard standing at attention outside the door. She didn't seem concerned. Jace cast his net further afield, straining a little, and suddenly brushed against a mind that was nothing but a clear, repetitive line of clanging notes. In confusion, he began to focus, and then Ral's hand came down on his arm, and the Izzet mage was dragging him out of his seat.

"Get down," Ral snapped, pushing Jace toward the ground.

"What—" Jace started to say, and then the world exploded.

There was a horrendous noise, more physical than auditory. A wave of sound clipped Jace's shoulder, sending him spinning backwards toward the wall. He threw up a hand, sending out a gust of wind that barely kept him from slamming into it headfirst. The impact was still enough to jar him for a moment. When his vision cleared, he and Ral were both huddled behind the remains of his desk. Debris was everywhere, and there was a roaring, tinny noise in Jace's ears. Ral opened his mouth in what looked like a groan as he sat up, but Jace couldn't hear it.

Are you all right? he projected dizzily into Ral's mind. The Izzet mage shook his head slightly, but it turned out to be an attempt to clear it rather than a negation.

Fuck, Ral replied succinctly. There was blood on his forehead from what looked like a nasty zigzag cut; the flesh around it was already puffy and yellow with bruising. Sound bomb. Who the fuck is throwing sound bombs—?

You saved my life, Jace said stupidly, his head still ringing and disoriented.

Jace, dammit, focus. We can deal with—fuck, I did just save your life, didn't I?

They stared at one another for a long, confused moment, and then the beeping indicator, which Ral was still holding, began to spit out tiny sparks.

What does that mean? Jace asked with sudden trepidation, but before Ral's mind could form an answer, he risked a quick look up over the remains of the desk. Standing in the doorway was a figure wreathed in crackling electricity, face and features hidden in the amorphous mass. He passed the image to Ral as he sank back down into the relative safety of the remains of the desk.

I should be able to handle that, Ral said tersely. I want to get behind it first, though. Care to distract it for me?

I can do that. Jace crawled carefully around the desk as the figure stalked across the room, then rose quickly and sent out a stinging mental lash as he did so—but instead of the resistance he had expected, he felt nothing. Dizziness surged as if he had taken a step and missed the ground, and he staggered. In the moment it took him to regain his equilibrium, the creature had already crossed the room to him, its hand reaching out and pinning him against the desk. Jace tried to struggle, and then felt the hairs going up on the back of his head again.

There was a crack so loud that it overwhelmed everything else, and a searing flash of light and heat vibrated through him. A moment later, he was on the floor, his ears ringing. Everything around him seemed very still and very hollow. There was no pounding in his ears, no rush of blood, nothing but a terrible quietness and darkness blurring in at the edges of his vision.

We have to get out of here. Jace wasn't certain if it was someone else speaking, or just an echo in his own mind. His lungs felt numb and far away, and the darkness in his vision expanded.


Ral watched in horror as the attacker slammed Jace into the desk and sent a jolt of electricity directly through the mind mage, who spasmed once and went still. He pulled himself upright and directed the full force of his magic toward the thing. A blast of wind picked it up and drove it through the wall of the office, but Ral was pretty sure it would be back shortly.

They only had one option left. "We have to get out of here," Ral said grimly to Jace, whose eyes were dazed, pupils shuddering around the edges as they tried to focus but could not. "Listen to me, Beleren—Jace. We have to planeswalk." No comprehension dawned in the twitching face. Ral wanted to shake him, wanted to leave him. He could get out of here by himself. This wasn't his problem. The Guildpact might crumble, but the Izzet would endure. Even if they tried to pin Beleren's death on him—and that might have been what they were thinking, judging from their method of attack—they'd have a hard time making it stick, since he would be too far away when the Guildpact was discovered. It was no skin off Ral's nose.

Like this, with the purple bruises already blooming beneath his skin where the lightning had torn through him, Jace looked younger and more vulnerable than Ral had ever seen him.

He grunted angrily. "So help me, Beleren, if you don't walk, I'll bolt you myself."

The wall shuddered, and Jace shut his eyes. For a horrified moment, Ral thought he'd lost consciousness, and then he realized a blue glow was seeping beneath the dark lashes.

Ral reached for the Eternities as well. He didn't have much practice, and he hadn't been off-plane in weeks, but it couldn't be harder than planeswalking while nearly dead from electrocution. As he felt the turmoil of the space-between-space envelop him, he reached over and grasped Jace's wrist. "Stay with me," he said. Jace nodded faintly, and the Eternities took them both.