Planar Chaos
One Shots: Firemind/Dragonlord
"Can everyone do me a favor and get out of my house?" Odom asked, attempting to diffuse the tension in the room. "I have a meeting with Niv Mizzet in under an hour. Sverre, Ash, you guys can stay and look after little Abby."
"Abby?" Brock repeated, disgusted by what he was hearing.
"Well we can't just call it 'Abomination'." Odom rolled his eyes at Brock. "Geeze, what kind of parents do you take us for?"
"Come on, Brock," Kyari began dragging the irate monk out the door. "We need to leave." Sa'Raah placed two firm hands on his back and began to push. Marthel ushered the rest of his failed attempt at an adventuring party out of the door.
"I'm really sorry about all of this, Odom. If it's any consolation, I think Abby's adorable." Marthel gave the other walkers in the room a sheepish half smile before leaving.
000
Odom waited outside of the Firemind's audience chamber with an incredibly fidgety Ral Zarek. Ral, the maze runner and murderer of one of Odom's greatest research projects, had spent the better part of the last half hour attempting to instruct Odom on how to keep the secrets of the multiverse.
"The Firemind cannot be allowed to know that there are other planes, Odom," Ral said, "you understand that, don't you?"
Odom rolled his eyes. This was the thirty-seventh time Ral had asked him that question, and while he perfectly understood why Ral was behaving this way, Odom also understood something else. He understood that you never ever underestimated the Firemind. Niv Mizzet was, in fact, full of himself, but he was rightly so.
"I had to have this same conversation with Jace, and I'll have it with every walker who comes through that door." Ral pointed behind him at the exact same moment none other than Sa'Raah, the Envoy of Dragonfire herself, opened the heavy metal door with a loud creaking sound.
"Good luck with that, Ral." Odom patted the man on the shoulder before being led to the audience chamber by a pair of goblins in test pilot gear. He thought they looked familiar, then again all goblins looked the same to him.
The audience chamber was one of the more form over function areas of the Izzet laboratory complex. It featured a massive pillow on which the Firemind reclined, the walls encrusted with blue and red glass and gems surrounding a multitude of mirrors. A mosaic on the floor depicted the guild's signet. Niv Mizzet himself sat in such a way that he mirrored the posture of the mosaic dragon beneath him.
"Your brilliance," Odom said, bowing low.
"Odom, come to ask for another leave of, what do you call it, research absence?" Niv Mizzet crossed his forelegs and tilted his head to the side. His blue, membranous mane settled against his skull. There was a mischievous, yet self-satisfied, twinkle in his large yellow eye, an eye that was easily larger than Odom's own head.
"Something like that,"Odom said. His actual preferred term was scholarly sabbatical.
"I suppose you've already asked the Simic for one as well?"
"Zegana told me to do whatever." Odom smirked. "She doesn't entirely trust me, though. She doesn't entirely trust anyone who had anything to do with Krajj."
"I can see why. Zegana always struck me as someone too obsessed with whether or not we should do something, not whether we can." Niv Mizzet glanced downwards and off to the side. "This absence of yours, I trust you won't fail to return with something suiting this guild's reputation?"
"Have I ever failed before?" Odom cocked one eyebrow.
"Certainly not, especially not after your first miraculous return," Niv Mizzet guffawed. "What does Zarek think you told me, again?"
"He thinks that I told you the magical force of the explosion teleported me to the Gruul badlands, where I was grievously injured and had to make it back to the city." Odom chuckled.
"Ha! Classic!" Niv Mizzet snickered. "As if I didn't already know about the multiverse. I'm far too old and far to brilliant for that, my boy. Zarek's concern about keeping it a secret, especially now that our Guildpact has mysteriously vanished, is incredibly amusing to me. So tell me, where are you going this time?"
"A maze plane called Xerex. It seems to be entirely based around artifacts and itself might not be a natural plane. There is some research from an ancient planeswalker named Urza who was, by all accounts, a genius."
"And you plan to bring it back to the guild, of course." Niv Mizzet's voice held a threat under the thinnest veil possible.
"Of course," Odom said, "once I and my colleagues have secured the research and done any preliminary tests necessary, I will bring it back here for further study."
"By 'colleagues' I suppose you mean that insane electromancer you bring around? I enjoy her presence. She lightens up the place quite a bit. She's also especially powerful from what I've seen." Niv Mizzet caught his reflection in a mirror and began to preen his gleaming crimson scales.
"Ash is something of a savant," Odom admitted. His own weak electromancy was a sore spot many other guild members liked to press.
"Odom." Niv Mizzet stopped his preening and suddenly became very serious. "I've been hatching a plan of sorts, something that Beleren with his new responsibilities would be required to disapprove of. If this research you're after proves to be useful to this end, how would you like to be the figurehead of the Simic? I'd be the real leader, of course, but one must keep up appearances. Ravnica has tremendous potential, and from my fantastically long life I've seen how the guildpact represses and squanders that potential. We as a plane could achieve great things. I need another guild on my side, and the Azorius and Dimir certainly aren't of a mind to agree with me."
Odom felt a strange sensation in his stomach. "Does this mean you'll never saddle me with another artifice project ever again?"
"My boy, I haven't given you one since you exploded. I'm too smart to not have learned that lesson."
Meanwhile, Ral was having a difficult time getting Sa'Raah to understand why Niv Mizzet wouldn't want to unite under the banner of another dragon.
"I don't understand," Sa'Raah said. "Dragons are the superior life form. Shouldn't he want to join forces with others of his kind to establish their supremacy across all planes? Especially if he's the only one here and sharing his power with lesser beings?"
"That might have been the way things worked on Tarkir," Ral said," but here on Ravnica we have something called the Guildpact that insures no guild becomes more powerful than another. Niv Mizzet proclaiming himself the Dragonlord of Ravnica wouldn't go over well with the other guildmasters."
"They couldn't do anything about it if he had the armies of Dromoka at his back."
"And where do you stand in this new world order, elf?" Ral shot back. "You aren't a dragon. You'll be a part of the inferior races toiling away to please these dragonlords."
"This isn't a helmet, you know." Sa'Raah gestured to the scaled protrusions surrounding her face and her horns. "This is the dragonscale boon, granted to me by my adoptive mother, the dragonlord Dromoka. I'm as much of a dragon as I can be."
"Still not really one, though." Ral smirked, crossing his arms.
Sa'Raah looked down at her feet. Where would she stand? Up until this moment she had always assumed her mother would guarantee her status among the other dragons, but would the other dragons stand for it? Sa'Raah hadn't thought about the necessity that she may need to sacrifice her rank in order for the dream she had for her clan to be achieved.
Sarkhan could become a dragon, though. He might be able to teach Sa'Raah how to complete her partial transformation. If that failed, she supposed being the bride of a dragon would give her some status. Especially if she bore him children. She'd be a mother of dragons herself.
But dragons didn't sit idly and ask politely. Dragons took what they wanted. They demanded respect, and when it wasn't given they took it with tooth and claw and flame. Sa'Raah wouldn't wait for them to make her a dragon. She'd prove that she was one, even if it meant fighting those she'd once called her family.
The door to the audience chamber opened and Odom waltzed out with his head held high. He winked at Ral and gestured for Sa'Raah to enter.
"What did you say to him?" Ral had Odom by the collar, but recoiled when the fabric melted in his hands only to reconstitute itself once the Izzet mazerunner let go.
"Ral Zarek, there is one thing I advise you to stop doing."
"What is it, Sparky?"
"Never underestimate the Firemind." Odom strolled calmly past Ral, slapping the other walker square in the face with his right hand as he did so. That arm, sleeve included, detached at the shoulder and hung there, adhered to Ral Zarek's face by its oozy consistency. A new arm swiftly grew from Odom's shoulder stump and he was able to open the main door with his right hand and carry on his merry way.
Ral himself was immobilized by revulsion and terror.
Sa'Raah was having much better luck with Niv Mizzet than Ral had ever thought possible in his most terrifying nightmares.
"Greetings, Dragonlord Niv Mizzet of Ravnica. My name is Sa'Raah, I am the Envoy of Dragonfire sent by Dromoka of Tarkir to unite the dragons of the multiverse so they may take their rightful place as the rulers of all inferior races." Sa'Raah bowed low before Niv Mizzet, as low as she would have before any of the dragonlords of Tarkir.
"I can't say anyone's ever bowed quite so low before," Niv Mizzet said. "But what you said about dragons taking their rightful place is certainly something I can get behind. I'm the last of my kind, you see. We were once feared and respected."
"You could be again, Dragonlord Niv Mizzet." Sa'Raah looked up at the glowing crimson beast in front of her.
"But it's going to cost me?" Niv Mizzet peered down at Sa'Raah. "My dear, I've played many games in my long life. Nothing you could say would have thrown me off guard about a cost."
"All I request in this new inter-planar order is that my place among the dragons be confirmed."
"Having doubts about your Dromoka's promises, are we?" Niv Mizzet did something he hadn't done in a long time. He extended his neck to be closer to eye level with his guest. The cool tiles of the floor slid against his scales, creating a melodic clicking sound.
Sa'Raah was suddenly intimately aware of the size and power of this dragon. He, like her mother, could snuff out Sa'Raah's life on a whim. She stood firm. Dragons didn't back down from other dragons.
"I'm called the Firemind for a reason, Sa'Raah. I have no patience for minds who cannot impress me or explode trying. You impress me. You have something we've needed in this guild for a long time. You have a grand vision. I'd love nothing more than for the Izzet to be a part of this vision. We can go places together, you and I. Unlike some on this plane, I recognize true talent when I see it."
"So you'll join with me?"
"If you'll join with me."
"Deal."
