It sometimes amazed Laurel that she could ever have gotten used to being around goblins. At first, it hadn't even been the sight of them, though they were a particularly unpleasant breed; the other mercenaries referred to them as "moggs," an ugly little name that fit well with their broad, sloping foreheads and flat noses. Rather, she had smelled them the moment she stepped through the gates. It was strange at first; her block back in Little Silhana was between a jam factory and a public housing complex with an open sewer, so she should have been used to it. Eventually, she had realized that everyone in Ravnica smelled the same: it was a sort of smoky-sweaty-latrineish musk that permeated everything, including the stones. The moggs smelled particularly awful largely because they didn't smell like that.
A couple of squads' worth of the little goblins were lounging around the courtyard now, fidgeting with their weapons and gaming with roughly-hewn dice. They didn't look up from their activities as Laurel passed by, and she didn't take much notice of them either. She had long since stopped expecting to be saluted in the manner befitting her rank, especially by the goblins. The other elves looked on them as barely sentient, but Laurel had seen their effectiveness in battle enough to refrain from such snobbery.
She paused for a moment as she neared the commander's tower. The sun was sinking rapidly towards the western horizon, casting a vivid orange aura across the sky. A thin ray of light spilled out from the window thirty feet above her. The master always kept his appointments.
"Just in time," came a slow, deep voice from her left. Laurel turned and saw the quartermaster Balthazar walking towards her. As he passed between the armory and the storehouse, the beam of orange light flashed briefly across his face, turning his pale green skin a strange shade. He took his hands from behind his back and cracked his knuckles, flexing long bony fingers ending in little claws.
Laurel nodded to the troll in greeting. He returned the salute, and his eyelids rose to reveal two milky white orbs. She had long since stopped being confronted by his odd appearance; he had been born blind, and relied on his powerful psychic senses and a telepathic link with the commander to perform his duties.
"Just in time," he repeated. "Chandra was here before. Would you like to know what they were doing? I saw the beginning of it before he broke the link – "
"Ugh! Too much information, Balthazar."
The troll chuckled, displaying his long serrated teeth. "I thought you elves were interested in such diversions of the flesh."
"Only when we're doing them." Laurel half-smiled. "What sort of a mood is he in now?"
"I am not sure. As near as I can tell, he has been reading for the last hour." He shrugged. "Considering the effort people put into pursuing the reproductive act, one would think it guaranteed some level of contentment afterwards. That does not seem to be the case, but one would expect no less from any such entanglement with the material."
"I had a feeling you'd say something like that," she frowned.
"I am merely a signpost on the path to enlightenment, Laurel. You are the one who must choose to walk it."
"I know you're having fun being an ascetic, Balth," she quipped, "but me, I couldn't get by without Ghor-Clan Stout Ale and the Harvest Festival. Talk to you when I get back."
"Yes." He moved away towards the gate, and she entered the tower. The floor was covered in a finely-drawn pentagram, snakelike runes meandering along each line. Laurel knew they were attuned to allow her passage, but always had to suppress a flinch when she entered. She'd seen enough Azorius snare paintings and Rakdos doomseals to be wary of anything drawn on a flat surface. Moving to the very center of the pentagram, she stood very still for a few moments.
When she felt her feet leave the floor, Laurel closed her eyes and held her arms very close to her sides. Even after countless dozens of times ascending the tower this way, it was the only way she could stomach the journey.
"I hate dealing with planeswalkers," she muttered.
At the top, she took a step forward, hearing her boot thump onto solid floor with relief. She opened her eyes, scanning the room quickly. Even for her powerful elven sense of vision, it was a riot of competing stimuli. Bookshelves crowded with heavy volumes stood nearly as high as the ceiling. Tables, chairs, and a couch were positioned haphazardly across the floor, mostly strewn with paper, pieces of odd-colored crystals, machine parts, and test tubes. At the far end, a much larger desk dominated the space under a window, its most prominent feature a crystal ball crackling with blue lightning that peeked out from the middle of even more paraphernalia.
The planeswalker Marek was standing at one of the bookshelves, holding a gigantic tome in his arms. He cut an unremarkable figure in his greatcoat, and the wide-open tome seemed nearly as large as him. Laurel shifted in place, brushing her ponytail out of her face.
"Ah," he said quietly, "right on time as usual, Captain. Come over here, if you will."
She carefully picked a path through the piles of slightly relevant material on the floor to stand next to Marek. He shifted the book in his hands so she could see the part he was looking at. "What do you think, Captain?"
The two pages were occupied by a full-color landscape drawing that displayed tall white mountains covered in snow. Lush pine trees wandered across their gentle slopes, and the sky was a pale blue criss-crossed by thin wisps of cloud.
"It's beautiful," Laurel said, and she meant it. "Where is it?"
She looked up as he continued, an odd expression on his face. "A place called Parma, very far from here. A place I haven't been for a very long time."
Laurel waited for a moment, but no further information was forthcoming. "I'll get right to the point," Marek said, folding his arms. "I need you to prepare your people to evacuate."
That really did take her aback. "I beg your pardon? Evacuate?"
"Yes." He held Laurel's gaze, dark eyes drilling unreadably into hers. "I am conceding the field." When she didn't reply, he shifted his stance and continued, "You will all be paid for the full time, of course."
"But . . . but why, sir? We're so close to victory!"
"Are we, Laurel?" He sighed heavily and picked up several pieces of paper from the desk. "I have here your last report about Alexander's power plant starting operations."
"Yes – "
"And Chandra came by earlier, with news from Kephalai." Laurel resisted the urge to raise her eyebrows suggestively. "This little skirmish of ours has gained the attention of the Four. Soon enough their people are going to be here, too."
"I know you're big on your modest persona," Laurel said, "but I don't think it's false optimism if I say we can take them."
Marek put the reports down and stared at the open book. The planeswalker continued, "I've been so very many places, seen so very many things. I've seen continents sink and moons fall from the sky. I've seen whole planets that grow out the way your hair does, oceans made of pure quicksilver. I've seen planes covered in fields of flowers where the worst thing that ever happens to anyone is getting a skinned knee." He turned and looked out the window. "And I've seen more wars like this than I can count. Half the time, three weeks after it's over, no-one even remembers what it was about. I'm tired, Laurel."
She looked at him quietly. "I didn't know your people got tired."
"I do, Laurel." He locked gazes with her, a thin smile on his face. "I'm tired of fighting, tired of chasing after the perfect spells, tired of the posturing at the League of Walkers."
"So you're just going to stop?" She stood quietly for a moment, internally debating whether or not to continue. "Sir, you've seen moons falling and oceans of quicksilver. You can't just un-see it." Laurel took a step back, putting her hands behind her back. "Oh. I'm sorry – I didn't mean to rain on your – "
"You didn't!" Marek interrupted. "You didn't. I understand what you're saying. That was part of what I wanted to mention when I called you up here. I've met so many captains, but you are the best of them all." Laurel shifted uneasily in place. "You're wise and insightful, and you're courageous enough to tell me what you see." He reached out and gently stroked her cheek. "If I were a thousand years younger . . ."
In spite of herself, she smiled slightly. Marek reached over and closed the book. "Get ready to evacuate. We're leaving as soon as everyone assembles in the courtyard."
He would say no more, and Laurel hurried back to ground level. The contingent of Ravnican elves needed no encouragement to pack up, and within minutes the entire force was milling about the courtyard, military discipline forgotten. The crowd of elves and goblins parted abruptly as the planeswalker approached.
"What needs to be said," he began quietly, "has already been said. Arrangements for your payment have been made. I hope we meet again one day, under happier circumstances."
His eyes settled on Laurel's face for just a moment before the world dissolved.
She closed her eyes and pulled her jacket tightly around herself as the cold wind of the Blind Eternities whirled silently past her face. When it stopped, she was back at the planar gate in Old Ravnica, her ears and nose already under attack from the city's comfortingly familiar bustle and odor.
Laurel opened her eyes, looking down at the walkways and aqueducts stretching down to the undercity, at the tall towers and the stratozeppelids and ornithopters flitting between them, at the unbroken vista of plazas and avenues and malls on either side as far as the eye could see.
"Um," she said, "dismissed." Her followers dispersed into the crowd, and she stood alone on the platform, thinking about Marek's parting words. Belatedly, she realized why he and his fair-weather friends from the League of Walkers fought over insignificant-seeming pocket planes and asteroids, because it was the same reason she had accepted his commission in the first place. They searched for something they could not find, because they did not know where to look. Laurel had thought she would be happy if only she had a little more money, if only she could get out of this god-awful city for a few years. Yet outside, she'd had embers thrown at her by Pardic dwarves and been hunted by titanic metal monsters, and found only more people looking for happiness or oblivion – or happiness in oblivion.
"There's no place like home," Laurel said softly.
"Truism," Balthazar appeared almost out of nowhere, "the first fallacy of debate. The obvious by definition does not need to be stated – otherwise it has ipso facto ceased to be the obvious."
"Don't scare me like that!" She smiled. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"This is merely the next step in my journey, as it is in yours. I think I will go to Kephalai and from there to Lorwyn."
"Never heard of it."
"Marek told me of it," the troll replied. "He says there is a place called the Dark Meanders, where one could sit for a decade and hear nothing but one's own thoughts."
Laurel extended her hand and felt the troll's long, cool fingers wrap around hers. "I hope you find what you're looking for."
"I wish you the same."
She folded her arms pensively. "Balth . . . are you still linked to Marek's mind?"
"The link weakens with every passing moment," he said, "but I am still picking up an impression here and there."
"What do you see?"
The troll ascetic lifted his sightless eyes towards Ravnica's teeming sky as though he really could see the towers, the blimps, and the carrier pigeons. "Mountains," he said quietly. "White mountains."