Planar Chaos
One Shots: Izzet Convention
Every so often, the Izzet guild of Ravnica hosts a convention of sorts for its mages to showcase their new projects. It is presided over by their guild leader himself, the great and illustrious Niv Mizzet. The sight of the last true dragon alive on Ravnica struck some with fear, others with awe, and still others with contempt.
Odom felt none of these things. He was visiting Ravnica for a singular purpose, and it certainly wasn't basking in the glory of a giant red lizard with wings. He did enough of that when he was actually working for the Izzet. He noted that the guild had yet again redesigned his signet. The dragon's neck had a more graceful arch to it and the spines of its membranous mane were pointier. He chuckled to himself. Niv Mizzet was a decent guild leader and incredibly brilliant, but his vanity tended to overshadow his accomplishments.
Odom found the lecture hall he was looking for and conjured a few illusory copies of himself to jump ahead in the line that had formed. Duplication was his specialty, and an Izzet mage had come up with an idea for duplicating spells. She called it "Replication". As creative as the Izzet mages were, Odom thought their naming conventions left something to be desired.
As he stepped into the space occupied by his duplicate closest to the front of the line, he heard a female voice behind him say "I saw that."
The woman behind him was dressed in the garb of a Duskmantle mage with the exception of three medallions, one sapphire, one jet, and one ruby, peeking out from under her cloak. In a rucksack she carried close to her body he could see the top of some sort of stylized owl made from metal. It might have been a lantern.
"I won't tell." She smiled sweetly. It was a dangerous sort of sweet, though, like poisoned food. She extended one pale hand adorned with rings that would have made Teysa herself look poor. "My name is Ashleigh. Pleased to make your acquaintance Mr..."
"Odom." He took Ashleigh's hand, shocked by just how cold it was.
"Interesting name, Mr. Odom."
"I'm an interesting guy." Odom smirked. It wasn't untrue. This woman probably had no idea that he could visit other worlds on a whim. She had no knowledge of the Maelstrom that once tore through Alara. She didn't even know Alara existed.
"You certainly seem that way. How many would use complex illusion spells to skip in line for a seminar on a technique that's been in development and is only now ready for the public? I'd rather use it to get into the theoretical discussion later on the possibility of multitargeting spells capable of targeting each enemy."
"I think they're starting to call it 'overload'," Odom mused. "I think I could get us front row seats to that one."
"If you couldn't, I certainly could."
"How would you manage that?"
"Oh... just a little pyrotechnics." Odom noticed sparks of red lightning flickering around Ashleigh's hands. What was a Dimir mage doing with a spell like that? Or what was an Izzet electromancer doing dressed in Duskmantle robes? He hadn't seen her around the Izzet laboratory complex before, so she might have been Dimir.
"That might draw a little too much attention, don't you think?"
"You do have a point, but in the aftermath this place would be so delightfully empty. Except for the corpses, of course."
"I don't see the appeal of death. The undead take too much work to maintain."
"You have a point. I typically deal in horrors, myself. The occasional demon."
"You're a confusing person," Odom said as they took their seats in the lecture hall.
"That was amazing," Ashleigh said as they exited the symposium on replication. "Just by adding that extra algorithm to the spell's construction, it can be readied, cast, but then it doesn't have to be readied again as long as you have the mana to pump into it."
"I know. It's brilliant. The design is so elegant compared to simply casting a second spell to target the first." Odom had to admit he was enjoying this mage's company. He rarely made friends in his travels across the planes. Nobody could quite understand a planeswalker, unless that person was also a planeswalker. Ashleigh reminded him of one such person, a walker named Sverre who resided on a cold and barren plane called Helheim. The things Sverre had done with the place made it at least acceptable for Odom, however it lacked a certain fire.
"Are our duplicates holding our place for the other seminar?"
"Of course. I wouldn't let us miss it for all the gold in the Orzhov treasury."
"From what I hear, that's a lot of gold."
"I don't need it."
"Neither do I."
They took their places at the front of the line and were admitted shortly thereafter. The first three rows of seats were marked off with bright red velvet ropes and signs that read "Caution: Splash Zone".
"What's all this?" Odom asked.
"I don't know, but it looks fun." Ashleigh pulled him along to the middle of the first available row, her grasp still cold like death. Odom hadn't seen any fangs, but he was beginning to entertain the idea that Ashleigh was a vampire, albeit one who came out in the sun. He'd seen stranger things in his travels. A giant elemental was his personal mount and he'd seen firsthand the maddening trails left by the eldrazi of Kozilek's lineage as they devastated Zendikar.
Three scarecrows that were supposed to look like goblins were scattered in the front rows that had been cordoned off. A pair of goblin mages stood on the stage preparing some sort of device that had far more cogs and hydraulic elements than were necessary.
Ladies and gentlemen," one cried out in its shrill voice. "We are honored to present the next step in spell enhancement. Behold, project overload!"
A series of mizzium mortars began raining from the ceiling. They did not stop after obliterating the first three rows, but instead moved to fill the entire lecture hall with screams of agony. Odom was, to say the least, unnerved by the look of sheer delight on Ashleigh's face as the other onlookers were struck down in blazes of fiery death. Izzet accidents were commonplace, but that didn't make them any less dangerous. He struggled through the crowd, unaware of whether or not his new friend was following him.
The glaring light of the sun briefly disoriented him. Ashleigh had ghosted up behind him as the lecture hall began to crumble. She laid a cold hand on the back of his neck.
"Don't look now, but the Azorius are here," she whispered.
"You there," one of the justicars pointed at the pair. "Halt. You are being detained for questioning."
"Like Helheim I am," Odom said. He reached far down into the ground with his magic and found the root of an ancient tree. It wasn't much, but it was enough. He summoned a large ooze from the ground. It was quickly joined by a group of animated fresh corpses.
"I have a plan," Ashleigh said. She pulled a lantern with five different colored panes of glass from out of her bag. Odom felt cold fingers rifling through his mind for a spell, any spell that could hold off the justicars long enough to make an escape. She didn't find what she was looking for, but stumbled across enough to confirm her suspicions.
"Okay. Plan B." A wave of fire began rolling towards the justicars that were locked in battle with Odom's ooze and Ashleigh's zombies.
She was a planeswalker. There was no way around it.
"On three, we're going to get out of here. Just follow me," Ashleigh commanded. "Three!"
For the first time since his spark ignited during a failed Izzet experiment and dumped him in the Maelstrom, Odom felt himself being forcibly ripped through the blind eternities. He came to on a cold stone floor in a crumbling cathedral under the light of Innistrad's full moon. The heron looked down at him with accusatory eyes. He didn't belong here. The mana felt wrong. It was empty and lifeless. He felt like he was back on Grixis.
"Where am I?" he asked, sitting up to see Ashleigh nursing a severe burn on her right forearm.
"Home. This is Innistrad, more specifically, an abandoned cathedral off the coast of Nephalia."
That was why he felt so off. There wasn't a forest for miles, only tidal swamps that gave him the creeps. His skin began to crawl as he felt rather than saw several pairs of eyes watching him.
"They won't hurt you," Ashleigh said as the small devils crept out from the shadows. "Not unless I tell them to."
"You're a," Odom began.
"Yes, and so are you. Tea is in one hour. I suggest you be dressed for the occasion. There is a wardrobe in the corner with clothes that might be more suitable than your guildmage's robes."